Prison contemplative programs

Prison contemplative programs are classes or practices (which includes meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer or similar) that are offered at correctional institutions for inmates and prison staff. There are measured or anecdotally reported benefits from studies of these programs such a stress relief for inmates and staff. These programs are gaining in acceptance in North America and Europe but are not mainstream.

These programs may be part of prison religious offerings and ministry or may be wholly secular. Of those sponsored by religious organizations some are presented in non-sectarian or in non-religious formats. They have had increasing interest in North American and European prisons since the early 1970s. Contemplative practices in prison however date back at least to Pennsylvania prison reforms in the late 18th century and may have analogs in older correctional history.

In North America, they have been sponsored by Eastern religious traditions, Christian groups, new spiritual movements such as the Scientology-related Criminon prison program, as well as interfaith groups.

Early Pennsylvania prisons, based on Quaker ideas, used meditation upon one's crimes as a core component of rehabilitation. When combined with isolation this became known as the Pennsylvania System. James Mease in the early 19th century described this approach involving isolation and meditation and the logic behind it:

[Repentance of crime is produced by:] (1) a tiresome state of mind from idle seclusion; (2) self-condemnation arising from deep, long-continued and poignant reflections upon a guilty life. All our endeavors, therefore, ought to be directed to the production of that state of mind, which will cause a convict to concentrate his thoughts upon his forlorn condition, to abstract himself from the world, and to think of nothing except that suffering and the privations he endures, the result of his crimes. Such a state of mind is totally incompatible with the least mechanical operation, but is only to be brought about, if ever, by complete mental and bodily insulation.

This approach was critiqued in-between the late 19th and early 20th century, specifically with research showing the isolation it incorporated was causing more harm than benefit. Modern contemplative programs are voluntary and generally in groups instead of in isolation.

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