San Quentin Community and Prison Health Project

The National Trust for the Development of African American Men, based in Washington, DC, is a value transformation program that helps incarcerated men take responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. While in prison, “Trust Fellows” purge the destructive value systems that led to their incarceration, and build new foundations grounded in the knowledge that they have assets that they need to use to make up for the harm they have caused their families and communities.

Prison-Based Component

The Urban Strategies Council is collaborating with the Trust on a Community and Prison Health Project inside California's San Quentin penitentiary. Using the Trust's asset-based community development model, the Community and Prison Health Project trains and organizes San Quentin inmates to perform community service activities focused on increasing health awareness and improving health outcomes. While the Project aims to improve the health status of men incarcerated in San Quentin, it also encourages participants to educate their families and communities on health issues.

Long-term prisoners are the hub of the Project's infrastructure. Selected by Trust and prison staff for their demonstrated leadership strength or potential, these Founding Trust Fellows are the first to receive the Trust's asset-based training. While receiving training, they are also designing and implementing community service projects that educate fellow inmates, their families, and their communities about preventive and corrective health care strategies. Soon, Founding Trust Fellows will begin recruiting and training younger inmates with upcoming release dates to become assets, rather than liabilities, to their families and communities.

Community-Based Component

Formerly incarcerated people need strong and reliable support networks to successfully transition back into their home communities, and they need help identifying ways to become involved in and contribute to community life. The asset-based value system the Trust program helps build in prison needs reinforcement when formerly incarcerated people must make critical decisions upon release. In meet these needs, the Trust and Urban Strategies are currently seeking funding to add a community-based component to the Community and Prison Health Project.

The goal of the community-based component will be to provide an out-of-prison “home” for Trust activities in high-impact re-entry communities. These community centers would offer a source for positive peer support, Trust training for formerly incarcerated people who did not receive it while in prison, a base for organizing civic engagement and community service activities, and an information and referral service to private and public agencies who provide services to the formerly incarcerated.