By Jen Mulson for The Gazette, April 30, 2013

There are a handful of yogic paths, and karma yoga is known as that of selfless service.

I've met several yoga teachers this year who are practicing karma yoga in our local criminal justice system. They are teaching prisoners and…

I just got back from prison.

that phrase often surprises my friends..  what did You do now ko shin,  is one response....

nothing I say, I just sat!

that's what it is...a wonderful Sangha of men in a prison near my home...

today, two new members came, these wonderful Sangha seem so…

The following essay is by William Blake, who has been held in solitary confinement for nearly 26 years. Currently he is in administrative segregation at Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security facility located in south central New York State. In 1987, Blake, then 23 and in county court on a drug charge, murdered one deputy and wounded another in a failed escape attempt. He was sentenced to 77 years to life. …

By Carter Tracy, PMI Admin & Books Behind Bars Coordinator

In 2012, PDN-headquarters changed the name of our primary organization to the Prison Mindfulness Institute.  We created a brand new website reflecting our current projects and visions for new endeavors.  The Prison Dharma…

It’s an optimistic headline: “Prison Rape: Obama’s Program to Stop It”. It leads into a comprehensive New York Review of Books article on three recently released Federal government publications.  Two of these documents examine sexual abuse in the nation’s detention centers while the other outlines the Department of Justice’s regulations for eliminating prison rape. All three aim to address the appalling number of people—young and old, female and male, citizen and those awaiting…

By Mary Pilon for The New York Times, January 3, 2013

RICHMOND, Va. — Three times a week, Robbie Norris, a lean, 50-year-old …

The Akasha Project in New York City is partnering with the Prison Yoga Project to offer a 5-part training in "Service Yoga" every Sunday through October 28 at Ashtanga Yoga New York.  

The five classes are led by instructors who have specialized in their particular area of teaching.…

In 2010-2011, the Insight Out Project, the Mind Body Awareness Project and Stronghold Sound teamed up to produce two pilot 40-minute audio curriculum modules for youth in the California Juvenile Probation System. The impetus…

Canadian Blues Singer, Rita Chiarelli, wanted to get to the roots of her genre's musical history.  Her journey led her to the infamous Angola State Prison, where several grandfathers of American blues music served time years ago.  What Rita discovered behind the walls of the massive prison complex was a thriving music…

from The Economist, March 2012

AWAY from the crowds and chaos of the roads in Tihar, a district in west Delhi, the ordered calm of prison comes as a relief. Pigeons hop in and out through the bars of the main gate on their way to the dovecote. A dog snoozes in the shade. A pair of…

By Amber Skorpenske for the Institute of International Journalism, Feb 15, 2012

Prisoners in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are getting out of jail early if they complete yoga courses.

Arizona’s legislature recently passed a law charging prison visitors a onetime $25 fee as a way to help close the state’s $1.6 billion budget deficit. Middle Ground Prison Reform, a prison advocacy group, challenged the law in court as a discriminatory tax, but a county judge upheld its constitutionality.

Fees like that, slapped on prisoners and their families, couldn’t be more…

An Arizona court ruled that a fee charged to prison visitors is constitutional. Once again the burden is placed on poor families already struggling to keep their loved ones connected to a support system that study after study shows is essential for keeping ex-offenders out of jail. I am sometimes overwhelmed by the mean-spiritedness of our penal system and have to work hard to maintain my faith in people's goodness.

Footage: Albin Höglund

Image: Spoon jackson

At Night I Fly

It took award-winning documentary filmaker Michel Wenzer ten years to complete the film At Night I Fly. Having gained unprecedented access to New Folsom prison – he…

NOTE: THIS IS A RECENT BLOGPOST FROM MY SON WHO IS IN PRISON IN COLORADO. I maintain a distribution list and email his posts to about 50 friends and family. We also use MySpace and Facebook. If you would like to read some of his earlier writing, or would like to be a friend online (Facebook primarily) or want to be added to the email list, just contact me. I am including this here for the…

Sex and power -- forces rampant in our prison system, thwarted and twisted by the jail culture. Lock up large numbers of the same gender and the frustrated sexual energy is palpable.

Likewise, in jail everyone -- wardens, correctional officers, inmates -- wants

power, fights for it, manipulates for it, in a place where everyone is made…

Front Gate at "The Farm," -- Angola

I’d been driving through thick, tall forests that blanket either side of the two land state road with an almost haunted feeling when suddenly the front gate of the Louisiana…

When you go to jail you feel like everybody’s in your business but nobody cares. You get cuffed, shoved into the back of a squad car.

The police blotter broadcasts to the world what you did. You get booked,

fingerprinted, photographed, everything about you fed into “The Man’s” hungry

computer. You’re watched—by correctional officers, wardens, nurses, other

inmates; even the kitchen workers warily scope you out. Bars instead of…