Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Break the Prison Cycle- PT. 1 with James Ackerman

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

It’s been estimated that a staggering 77% of inmates will be arrested for a new crime within five years of being released from prison. James Ackerman, CEO of Prison Fellowship, has found that through his program, the rate drops all the way down to 17%. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen speak with James about how his fellowship’s 4 pillars help to turn people’s lives around for good.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome, everybody. We have a very special podcast for you today. We have a new friend, James Ackerman, who is the CEO and president of Prison Fellowship. And James and I spent a good bit of time talking about what they do, and I was so impressed. I just had to share

it with you. That's really interesting. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you was so impressed. I just had to share it with you. That's really interesting. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So you've been the CEO and President of Prison Fellowship for? 20 months. 20 months. Yeah. And 12 years before that, I became a volunteer with Prison Fellowship, starting by counseling and mentoring men in prison, and then later on teaching life skills to men coming up for parole consideration. Now, this was a big switch for you, though, correct? You were like CEO. You were more in business and the entertainment industry. Is that correct?

Yeah, I've spent my entire career in the media and entertainment industry. But in 2004, my wife, Martha, sent our son and I on a father-son retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains. At the time, I was the CEO of a publicly traded company called Open TV. And as God would have it, our cabin mates on that father-son retreat were a guy named Dick Paulson and his son, Jeff. And Dick was the development director for Prison Fellowship on the West Coast at the time. And I told him I was fascinated with their work in prison and the story of Chuck Colson. And I said, but I'd never made the time to go visit a prison. And he said, I can fix that.

So I went and saw a program, a prison fellowship program, intensive program they had in a prison in Iowa, and I was just absolutely hooked. That's fascinating. Yeah. Really interesting. And prison fellowship was started, you told me, by Chuck Colson. It was. So Chuck went to prison for a crime related to Watergate.

He was Nixon's special counsel. And while he was in, he became a Christian before he went to prison. But while he was in prison, he discovered that incarcerated men and women are amongst the most marginalized in society. Sure. And he made a decision to start this organization after he got out. And that was 41 years ago. Wow. And so Prison Fellowship is, you said, in 27 states? So Prison Fellowship actually has ministry in all 50 states. But our most intensive program is something called the Prison Fellowship Academy. We have 78 academies in 27 states today. And it's our hope by 2026 to have academies in every single state in at least one

men's and one women's prison. And one of the statistics you told me just blew me away. So recidivism, that means if you go to prison and get out, what's the percentage of time you go back is somewhere between 60 and 70 percent in the United States. And that's because you sort of learn the culture and the behavior, correct? And you lose hope in ever sort of being put back, like working in a normal functioning society. Well, there's so many factors that contribute to recidivism. But to your point, recidivism is about two-thirds of people who get out of prison will return to prison within a three- to five-year period. Right. Except people who go through your academy, which is a year long. Yes.

Remember, year long in mastery for Brain Warriors Way. We agree with that. 17%. That's amazing. Unbelievable difference. That is amazing. So what are the components of the academy? What do people learn? And you said it's completely voluntary. It's completely voluntary. You apply to get into the academy. We accept people of any faith or no faith background at all into the academy. But all of our curriculum is grounded in a biblical worldview, right? And the primary goal of the academy is to address the criminogenic thinking and behavior of men and women in prison. So I want to make sure everybody hears that. Because the first time I heard that, I'm like, what does that mean?

Criminogenic. Criminogenic, yeah. Criminogenic, which means thinking that makes it more likely. Not just thinking. Thinking, and we would also add brain health, that makes it more likely for you to make decisions where you can't live at home anymore, where you have to be incarcerated. Right, right, exactly. And so there are four pillars to the academy, and they are very

quickly unpacking the gospel to help you understand. We use a program called Alpha to do that. We want people to look at their lives differently, that God created you for a purpose, that he has a plan for your life, and God wants you to be able to live out your full potential. The second pillar of the academy is what I call addressing the first cousins of one's criminal history, which are things like anger management issues and addiction issues. And so we introduce Celebrate Recovery into all of our academies. We personally know a lot of people who have gone through Celebrate Recovery. Celebrate Recovery is a program developed by Saddleback Church that helps address addictions.

But I love the term First Cousins because for sure, at least in my mind, it's also head trauma. It's brain infections like Lyme disease. It's post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder that's never been diagnosed. It's people who have bipolar disorder. All of those things that are contributing to why people go to jail. Exactly. And those first cousins are often the greatest contributor to recidivism as well. People get out of prison, go back to the old neighborhood, and start using the same drugs again.

Right. Or they haven't treated. Or haven't dealt with those anger management issues that they haven't treated. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The third pillar is all about relationships. The majority of men in prison grew up in a household with no father or an unhealthy father figure. And for women, it's even worse.

Over 80% of women have suffered abuse at the hands of a man. So what do healthy relationships look like? And we unpack that with them. And the last is training folks in practical life skills. How do you manage money? How do you go about building a household budget? How do you go about looking for a job? And all of those things.

Again, the academies are, they begin while you apply to get in. There's a graduation at the end. 85% of the graduates of a prison fellowship academy are due to get out of prison within the next 24 months. So this is kind of the pre-entry to a re-entry program. So interesting. So I love what you're doing. It takes a very special person to do what you're doing and to really see people differently,

have that empathy, create a program to really help these people. As I'm listening to you, sort of the profile of what, or some of the statistics of what creates this recidivism and actually what causes people to go to prison to begin with. That was sort of my life growing up. That was me. That was my profile. And so this, you know for purposes of this podcast, we're not going to be able to cover

why do some people go to prison, why do some people, the wolves versus the sheepdog type of mentality. Probably my mother, I don't know. But we're not going to be able to get into all of that for today. But what I do want to ask you about, I love that you're working on the mindset of the people in prison. I have a question.

It's based for personal reasons. What do you do about the mindset of people in society? About having more empathy and accepting people back in? Because that's part of the recidivism, I would think. Yeah. You ask a very good question. So last year in 2017, we worked with 60 other organizations who are as diverse as the Charles Koch Institute and the Heritage Foundation from the NAACP and ACLU to campaign with the U.S.

Senate to declare April as second chance month. And we were successful. But the declaration came through at the end of the month. So this year, we're going big with second chance month. As we speak, we have over 115 partners who are working with us to get the word out to give people a second chance. People who have paid their debt to society, who are prepared to live as productive citizens, give them an opportunity to do so.

So, for example, you've heard about the Ban the Box initiative, which is not asking on an employment application if you have a felony conviction in your background. We ban the box. We don't ask people if they have a felony conviction. So we give people an opportunity to get to the interview, and then we'll have that conversation and figure it out. But if you can move from being represented

on a piece of paper to getting that interview and hopefully have an opportunity to convince that employer that whatever was your problem that led you going to prison in the first place is no longer your problem, then the employer can conclude it's not gonna become my problem. Right, and it's not going to become my problem. Right. And it's not an easy thing to do. So I know Daniel told you a little bit about when we worked with the Salvation Army. So we did a big program where we volunteered to help

the Salvation Army clean up their food and get the food really clean. And this was their largest, you know, chemical addiction recovery program that they have. And it was 185 beds. It was a great program. And I wanted to help the leader of the group. I really did want to help her. But when she asked me to actually get hands on, roll up my sleeves, get involved down, you know, sort of at the granular level and come work with the people that were there, they were court ordered, you know, to be there and they had some pretty serious crimes I I found myself suddenly not liking myself very much I had this just visceral reaction and I didn't even really understand why at first but then it was connected to my upbringing it was connected to how I was raised you know

where I was raised and it was not an easy life growing up. And so all of a sudden, I found myself just like I broke down in tears. And I told Daniel, I'm like, I can't do it. There is no way I'm going to go face those people. I found myself being extremely judgmental. And I didn't want to do it. And I'm like, God picked the wrong person this time. And he looked at me with that look, and he's like, God picked the perfect person.

So in the end, it ended up being very healing. Probably more for me than it was for them. And it was great for them. But how do people move past that? It's a really hard thing if you've got your own baggage. So maybe that's too much for this podcast, but we've got to get people to the point where they can work on their own issues to be able to accept people and trust that we can move past. Because these people are working

on these issues. We've got to be able to get them to where we can connect again. Look, we've all made mistakes, right? Not all of our mistakes have led to us going to prison. Right. Some of our mistakes should have led to us going to prison. Sure. But didn't get caught. Right. So I think we can and we should be more empathetic to those who went to prison. And when you consider behind that,

that there is abuse that led to this woman becoming an addict, that led to her stealing from people, that led to her going to prison, it should lead to some sympathy and understanding that if we address those things, if we work with her in prison to help her overcome those things, to help her heal from those hurts in the past, then we're going to help make a more productive citizen. So easy to blame. Right. Easy to judge.

The imaging work we do yeah um yes just completely really helped me in my mind so growing up i actually had no opinion of the death penalty i just really hadn't thought about it i grew up roman catholic and they were against it right um but when i started our imaging work in 1991 pretty soon attorneys started to hear about it. And so they'd send us people who did really bad things. And their brains were so awful that I began to really question, is it the sign of an evolved society to kill sick people? Because clearly their brains were damaged. And it wasn't popular at all because I grew up in a household where my dad would basically say, kill the bastard.

Did something bad. Because the easy thing is to judge people as bad. Well, especially if you've been hurt. The harder thing is to go, why? And can I fix it? Or can i influence and what would jesus do you know because you know growing up and all we've been a christian my whole life well what would jesus do would jesus go visit them in prison yes would jesus heal them in prison so that they could have a more productive life? The answer is yes. And so who am I to judge?

I think it says don't judge a lot in the Bible. Who am I to judge? And why can't I be more useful? You know, one thing, I had a huge epiphany when I was working with the Salvation Army. And I had a couple of these pretty hard criminals come running up to me with their big pants. They had lost all this weight. One of them passed his GED after failing three times.

They were just so grateful. Their energy, their brain fog cleared up, and their massive gratitude. And so they were coming up and they were running up to me. And I'm like, at first I was like, oh, like it was weird for me. And then all of a sudden, after enough time of working with them and hearing their stories, I'm listening to their me and I'm like, at first I was like, oh, like it was weird for me. And then all of a sudden, after enough time of working with them and hearing their stories, I'm listening to their stories and I'm like, that story is not that different than mine.

That story is not that different than mine. Wait a second. I'm so confused. Like, do you know what I mean? And so all of a sudden my epiphany, the thing that came to me and the thing that helped me sort of turn it around. And I can't tell you, I never have those thoughts. I'd be lying. I do. But what I think about when I have those thoughts, what came to me in that moment and what softened my heart at that time, my story's not different than theirs. And that for every person that I was able to help, even though what I was doing wasn't that much, it's not like what you're doing, but that small thing that I was able to do for any one of them was one less scared little girl or little boy. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, but you got to start there. Yeah, you got to start

there. And that for me was the epiphany I had when I went to prison for the first time. I met people who are people. Yeah. And they need to be loved as people. There's a reason why going back to quoting Matthew, Jesus called us to visit the imprisoned. They're people and their lives matter and investing in their lives. Some people get it together or don't go down that really horrible path. Some people go down a different path and it takes them into, you know, addiction, homelessness, imprisonment, whatever it is. And that's what you experience through the Salvation Armoring program in which you worked.

But any of us could have ended up in that place. Well, people in my family did. When we come back, we're going to talk about forgiveness and how that might apply to the conversation we're having. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com.

Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.