Anthroposophical Prison Outreach Supports Self-Rehabilitation

Every human being has the potential to develop a healthy, vital spiritual life. Anthroposophy, a science of the spirit developed by Rudolf Steiner, offers new ways of understanding life’s riddles as well as a path of meditation and self development. 

Over 2.2 million individuals are currently incarcerated in jails and prisons in the United States and over 70% return to prison within 5 years. This means that 1 in every 142 citizens is behind bars and imprisonment rates continue to rise with the established punitive rather than rehabilitative attitude toward crime. Anthroposophical Prison Outreach makes the work of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) available to a growing number of these individuals who are interested in self-rehabilitation. 

Anthroposophical Prison Outreach (APO), a non profit program, encourages incarcerated individuals to take responsibility for their lives. This is accomplished through the study of anthroposophical teachings, the practice of meditative exercises, meaningful reflection on their own biographies and the development of positive human relationships. 

Our goal is to help prisoners:

~ foster a harmonious inner life
~ leading to a balanced public/outer life
~ resulting in successful reintegration in community life

 

  It is my desire to transform my current prison experience and life, into something better, something freer, and something more independent. I like reading about the “wiser person”  and the “inner being within my human make-up." Benjamin, Ione, CA

 

Our Inspiration

“The second condition is that the student should feel himself coordinated as a link in the whole of life. Much is included in the fulfillment of this condition, but each can only fulfill it in his own manner. … Such an attitude of mind, for instance, alters the way I regard a criminal. I suspend my judgment and say to myself: “I am, like him, only a human being. Through favorable circumstances I received an education, which perhaps alone saved me from a similar fate. I may then also come to the conclusion that this human brother of mine would have become a different man had my teachers taken the same pains with him they took with me. I shall reflect on the fact that something was given to me which was withheld from him, that I enjoy my fortune precisely because it was denied him. And then I shall naturally come to think of myself as link in the whole of humanity and a sharer in the responsibility for everything that occurs.”


- Rudolf Steiner, from How to Know Higher Worlds, Ch. 5

Anthroposophical Prison Outreach
1923 Geddes Avenue - Ann Arbor, MI 48104
prisonoutreach@anthroposophy.org
1-734-662-9355 ext. 38

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