Liberation Behind Bars - Meditation Interventions in Prison Populations

Abstract: This paper draws on a literature review which questioned whether meditationinterventions in prison populations encourage desistance from crime. The purposeof this paper was to discover possible connections between criminologicaltheories of desistance and the research findings of meditation courses in prison. Abrief analysis of the evaluation findings on the presented meditation courses isimplemented. This paper concludes that meditation projects in prison populationsmay not reasonably address desistance; however, there is evidence that the effectsof such adjunct interventions can encourage prisoners to progress on the pathtoward desistance through mindfulness and other pro-social orientation.