Teach Inmates Decision-Making Skills

Going to prison is not the most popular volunteer endeavor. Yet, this is exactly what a special group of people do in the Thresholds Decision Making program. For an eight week period volunteers go into correctional institutions in the state to teach inmates how to make better decisions in their lives. Volunteers must take one day of training, fill out security clearance forms, attend a security meeting and recieve a volunteer badge before they can enter the prison classroom.

Each student inmate is assigned their own teacher. The inmate and teacher sit at a table across from each other in a prison classroom, each with a Thresholds workbook and together discuss and complete the exercises. The format of the program is one of the reasons it is so successful. Because it is not conducted in a traditional classroom style, it eliminates the usual tension, and peer pressure to not look dumb, stupid, or even too smart. It takes into consideration the reading levels of inmates, many of whom have dropped out of school in the 9th grader or earlier. Individual attention is the key to the success of this program. Since 1999 Thresholds has graduated 345 inmate students in 43 eight-week cycles.

To learn more about volunteering with Thresholds contact RSVP.

Contributed by Lynn Kroesen.