Core Organizing Principles

GUIDING PRINCIPLES
To accomplish IPP's re-education and socialization process, a set of sophisticated psychological interventions, combined with practical self-awareness and mind/body integration techniques are employed. IPP has developed a set of guiding principles to support its objective of bringing about enduring behavioral change in prisoners. These principles are applied to IPP's core curriculum:

Radical Accountability - IPP programs seek to develop personal responsibility within each prisoner, fostering an understanding that we are all accountable for our actions in the past, present, and future. Individually, prisoners discover their own unique 'work' and learn what it means to make a lifelong commitment to 'working on yourself'. 'Radical accountability' begins by each prisoner making a personal commitment to help build and maintain a learning community.

Mind/Body Integration - The work of true self-transformation is a multi-layered process that happens on the physical mental, emotional and spiritual levels. To bring about lasting behavioral change, cognitive insights need to become embodied, i.e. felt and known through the whole body. Learning emotional intelligence starts with the ability to sense feelings as bodily perceptions (sensations).  This new awareness skill functions as the primary orientation to understanding what causes strong behavioral reactions.

“Sitting in the Fire' - There are three possibilities in dealing with any situation: run, hide, or turn and face it. Impulse control requires staying present with painful or uncomfortable feelings or sensations without trying to change or escape from them. 'Sitting in the fire' is about living fully in the moment instead of coping, avoiding or escaping, and learning to stay present with whatever arises. It provides the foundation for a new found emotional resiliency and behavioral stability.

Normative Culture - Involving a person in setting their own standards is a most effective means of encouraging them to live by these standards. Normative Culture fosters a way of behaving that is internally motivated rather than enforcing compliance to an external system of rules as the sole standard.  Social science research teaches us that ultimately, intrinsic motivation (versus forced compliance) is what drives lasting, positive behavior change.

Acceptance - IPP programs promote an acceptance for everything, from a new member of the group to whatever is happening in the moment. Emotions, often seriously denied in the past, are especially welcomed. The idea is to reframe past transgressions as opportunities for remorse and healing, rather than affirmations of a deeply internalized shame message, such as “I am fundamentally messed up - and therefore not accountable to myself or anyone else.” Instead people learn to become emotionally literate and personally responsible.

Social Intelligence - The IPP group dynamic fosters an experience of mutuality as an expression of social and emotional intelligence. This evokes a deep recognition of an individual's value and re-awakens a shared experience of being human. Class members experience empathy, kinship, and perhaps for the first time a deeply felt sense of belonging. This promotes mutual respect as well as balances one's personal needs with those of others.

'From the Courtroom to the Classroom' - IPP's self-awareness practices enable inmates to quickly find their way out of the endless loop of blame and self-recrimination, and transform their challenges into learning opportunities. Once, (a) an understanding for what drives one's behavior has been achieved, and (b) remorse for one's crimes has been fully felt, a new orientation toward life and learning can begin to emerge. The ground for this new orientation is an attitude of deep self-acceptance in present time.

On 9/20/05, IPP was picked from among 285 non-profit organizations to receive the San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award “for pioneering innovative in-prison rehabilitation programs and for being a model and catalyst for statewide prison reform.”