Insight-Out

Insight-Out’s GRIP Program serves the large multi-ethnic populations of ex-offenders and youth at risk of incarceration. GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power) is an in-depth, fifty-two week journey into the participants' ability to understand and transform violent behavior and replace it with an attitude of emotional intelligence. Participants become "emotionally literate" and come to comprehend the origins of their violence and develop the skills to track and manage strong impulses before they are acted out in destructive ways. The GRIP program has been developed over 17 years of direct work with thousands of prisoners, mostly with violent offenders in San Quentin State Prison. This project focuses on completing a DVD instructional series and adjoining workbook to support replicating the GRIP program. The men featured in the series are primarily life-sentenced (with parole) violent offenders. These are prisoners that are never included in any prison reform conversation, as their stigma excludes this, yet there are 34,000 life-sentenced prisoners in California alone. The footage shows that these people are healing each other and ready and eager to teach the youth what they have learned.