Practice Laboratory
The Center’s practice laboratory provides a venue for practice-based learning and practicing interventions. We recognize that the lives of the people we study are complicated. They are influenced by many organic, financial, behavioral, and social factors, and their confluence. Similar complexity exists at the organizational level. Studying complex processes requires a rich and nuanced understanding of these processes prior to conceptualizing and modeling them.
Researchers at the Center are involved in several practice-based learning initiatives, including:
- Books Behind Bars, founded by Dr. Wolff in 2004, is an in-prison literacy program that involves reading and discussing books. Currently, there are four chapters of Books Behind Bars in two New Jersey prisons, with 60 women participating as members. The reading list includes books that inspire, that challenge, and that address topics that brought women to prison: domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, victimization, and mental illness. Dr. Wolff received a Russell Berrie Foundation Award for “Making a Difference” for this program.
- Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is a national network of over 60 college and university educators that involves people inside prison in college-level courses. Dr. Draine is a member of the Inside-Out Think Tank, located at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford in Pennsylvania. This group also includes a group of prisoners who discuss issues related to incarceration, write books and papers, develop and organize conferences/workshops hosted inside prison, and design neighborhood murals. Dr. Draine is supervising a dissertation on the Inside-Out Program.
- Re-Start with Mentoring is a mentoring program in which men and women leaving prison are connected with community members prior to leaving prison who provide individualized support to these reentering individuals before and after their release.
- Ventures in Successful Living implements innovative programs for practice. The first program under development for implementation is a three-step, reentry-rehabilitation-resettlement program, which is designed to prepare men and women aged 30 and older who have completed prison sentences of 10 years or longer. The first step, the Reentry Curriculum, was implemented in September 2008 at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey.