Fri. 7/29 at 8am: We explore the Alternatives to Violence (AVP) project which began in 1975 as a collaboration between inmates at Green Haven Prison (near New York City) and Quakers who were interested in working with youth gangs and teens at risk.
The program spread throughout New York State prisons and then to other states as a both a prison program and as a community program for all. AVP facilitators, all trained-volunteers, offer nonviolence workshops in prisons, as well as in the communityr for all who would like to reduce the level of unresolved conflict in their lives. AVP seems to have been effective in reducing violence within the prison itself, reduced recitivism, and given inmates of even violent crimes a new chance to succeed when released from prison.
Host Carol Boss talks with Pat Hardy, an AVP leader in California, and two former California inmates both who served over 25 years each for second degree murders. James Patrick Alexander and Carl Irons are both AVP graduates, now AVP facilitators, and trying to make the most of their lives out of prison.
An hour-long version of the program, as well as all of the programs in the series going back to 2003, can be heard online at www.peacetalksradio.com.