A regular Source feature, Undercurrents explores issues, ideas and events as they develop beneath the surface in the Virgin Islands community.
It’s not late, but it is dark. The sun set an hour ago and the streetlights at either end of the block are both out. Office workers and shop owners have gone home. As you reach the intersection, you hear screams and look in their direction. A man is pulling a woman by her hair.
What do you do?
Think about it for a minute.
That’s actually longer than you might have in real life. But it’s the amount of time that people participating in an Alternatives to Violence Project workshop are given to decide what they would do.
With the credo “conflict is part of daily life…but violence doesn’t have to be,” AVP is an international program that traces its roots to the Green Haven Prison in New York where a group formed in 1975 to address growing violence among inmates. Today workshops are held in 30 states and more than 55 countries, according to the AVP website. While prisons are the main focus, they are also held in a wide range of settings – essentially anywhere there is conflict, which by some definitions could mean anywhere.
In the Virgin Islands, Carolyn Keys, a Frederiksted resident, has been organizing workshops in schools and with community groups, primarily on St. Croix, since 2004.
“We tried for seven years” and finally got permission to take the program into the Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility in February 2011. Since then, she estimated 60 inmates have attended at least the basic workshop and many have completed the program.
Workshops are offered every other month, although some sessions were cancelled this year because of problems at the prison, such as the lockdown ordered when officials suspected a prisoner had a highly contagious illness.
The workshops at Golden Grove run for four consecutive days. The first three are each six hours long and the fourth is a half-day.
“The first thing we do is tell them our philosophy: There is good in everyone. That sets the groundwork for everything we do,” Keys said.
Typically there will be about 15 inmates in a workshop and anywhere from two to four trained facilitators, one or two of whom are prisoners themselves. Everyone sits in a circle, thus promoting communication and equalizing participants.
In the basic training, the goals are affirmation, communication, cooperation, community-building, trust-building and conflict resolution, Keys said. Later, in more advanced programs, the group may focus on specialized areas of interactions, such as anger, forgiveness, or male-female relationships.
Things may start off with a Listening and Affirmation exercise. Participants pair off and take turns being the speaker and the listener. The first speaker gets a couple minutes to tell his partner all about a person he admires, and why he admires the person. “Very often, it’s ‘my mother,’ ” Keys said.
The listener must do only that – no interruptions to ask questions or interject a comment.
The exercise can work on several levels. Just having someone really listen to you is very affirming; it means you are someone who is important enough to hear out, with opinions and feelings that matter.
The exchange “is the beginning of establishing commonalities” Keys said. And that’s a wide open door to communication.
The workshop is replete with exercises because “we learn by doing,” she said. Some of them challenge participants to examine their values, but others are what she called “Light and Lively” exercises – opportunities to get people up and playing and laughing.
On the more serious side, “we do role play in conflict situations.” The scenario may be a store owner and a thief confronting one another, or perhaps two people in a cafeteria line – one waiting his turn and the other jumping the line.
“Every exercise is processed or debriefed,” Keys said. “Part of what we do is help them to realize there are choices.”
The inmates themselves suggest relevant scenarios and exercises, she said. “It works because the content comes from the participants.”
No one is forced to take a workshop. Keys said some prisoners say they sign up because they have seen it make a difference for a fellow inmate, or because they admire one or another of the “inside” facilitators, primarily long-time inmates who are generally respected by the prison population. And some may come because they believe it will look good on their records. But that doesn’t bother Keys, because they can still benefit.
So far, AVP is offered only to male prisoners of Golden Grove who have already been adjudicated.
“We’re waiting to be allowed to go into the women’s side,” Keys said. The group also wants to offer the program on St. Thomas where the territory houses most of the people who are awaiting trial and sentencing. Keys was on St. Thomas last weekend conducting workshops for people to be facilitators. She wants to develop a corps of trained volunteers.
She also wants to expand efforts outside of the prison setting, particularly in schools.
“We’re advocating for Peace Education in the curriculum,” she said. Similarly to AVP, Peace Education trains students to deal with conflict without using violence.
“We live in a society that is riddled with violence, and our prison is no exception,” said Golden Grove Warden Basil Richards. “The Alternative to Violence Program helps prisoners to resolve disputes and create unity among their peers. The program deals with prisoners learning to respect one another, communicating their differences in a non-violent way, and understanding why violence occurs in the first place. As a result of the AVP, especially in such a small prison, violence is significantly reduced.”
