What is the Prison SMART Program?
Prison SMART Program
“If people get sick, we take them to the hospital and give them the right medicine to get better. If people’s behaviour is sick, we bring them to the prison, but we forget the medicines.” – Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
The Mission
The Prison SMART Programme aims to transform the lives of people working in or incarcerated within the criminal justice system. Prison SMART teaches skills that reduce stress, heal trauma and provides practical knowledge of how to handle negative emotions in order to live to one's highest potential and contribute to society in a positive way.
- So far the lives of more than 3,50,000 prison inmates have been transformed through the ‘Prison Smart’ programs
Basic Premise
The basic premise of the program is that no individual is really ‘bad’ but takes to crime due to external stressors which they are unable to deal with effectively.
Prison - Morocco
On the 15th of January 2007, we conducted the first Prison SMART course in Morrocco. The director of several youth prisons, Mrs Assiae Loudie was impressed by the transformations among the course participants and especially by the strong connection and feeling of belongingness between the young prisoners and the correctional officers.
She also mentioned that the positive changes among the prisoners were so visible on their faces after the course and that she would give her full support to Prison SMART project hereafterRead More
