The Prison Council Initiative (formerly the Inmate Council Program) is a six-month intervention where participating incarcerated individuals are trained to facilitate Council sessions for their peers, empowering them to become positive agents of change, on the prison yard, and in their lives. The program contributes to a shift of culture within prisons and equips participants with tools for successful reentry and reintegration into their communities upon release. After the successful 2013 launch of the program at Salinas Valley State Prison, the program has now grown to 22 California prisons.  
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For more detail about the Prison Council Initiative, download the program overview, or contact us.

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our impact:
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22
california state prisons

2000
incarcerated program participants

video testimonials

Meet Joseph

Meet Mitch

Meet Juan

Meet Aniva

research

Independent program evaluation of the Prison Council Initiative conducted by researchers from the University of California and the RAND Corporation revealed significant positive outcomes in the following areas:
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• Reductions in physical aggression
• Reductions in verbal aggression
• Reductions in anger
• Reductions in hostility
• Reductions in PTSD symptoms
• Improvements in mindfulness
• Increases in empathy
• Increases in resilience
• Increases in sense of connectedness with others
• Improvements in mental health​

An evaluation report of recent research on this program conducted by Dr. Stacy Calhoun and her team at UCLA may be found here.

On April 4, 2018, Center for Council was asked to present an outline of its evaluation program and preliminary findings to the California Rehabilitative Oversight Board; view more information on that presentation here.

prison council initiative sites

Center for Council has implemented the Prison Council Initiative in 22 prison facilities operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The majority of the programs began as a result of the Innovative Grant Program, which was established in 2015 by CDCR to "support and advance inmate rehabilitation efforts and increase volunteerism in prisons across the state."

Center for Council has received funding for all three rounds of this program. In 2017, we were awarded funds to implement PCI at eight new facilities, include three projects that will deepen and support programming over a three-year period, expanding in phases throughout the prisons.

We are also grateful for funding that has come through private sources (including the JIB Fund Community Building Initiative), supplementing the state-funded programs and enabling us to expand the reach of the program to several additional facilities.

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