Jericho Community Circles

The most difficult challenge that offenders face is reentry into their communities. The high risks of recidivism for returning offenders are conspicuous testimony to that fact. The coercive and numbing environment of institutions undermine the very skills that are so crucial to effective adjustment on the outside—flexibility, responsibility, self-awareness, and independence. Jericho Community Circles support men in the reentry process by bridging the circle and initiation work done within institutions with men’s circles operating on the outside. Men who have completed a minimum curriculum and/or initiation cycle within an institution are, with the supervision and guidance of after-care planners, integrated into men’s circles in the communities to which they return. Through the work of the Jericho Reentry Project, these community circles help extend and strengthen the work that was started in the institutional setting. In cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Correction, Community Circles enable men to integrate their ongoing work into their lives and face everyday problems with the support of initiated men and returnees who have similar life experience.