The Accountability Project
The Accountability Project is a developing initiative intended to bring incarcerated offenders closer to the challenging notion of personal accountability. This is a notion not easily absorbed by those who are unused to taking responsibility for their actions and impulses, or who tend to blame others for what they themselves have done. It requires a level of honesty and self-reflection that does not come easily to many offenders, nor is it particularly well supported in the prison population setting.
It can help offenders transform denial and minimization into a commitment to integrity and honest intention by facing the past and re-framing the future.
Personal accountability requires first and foremost the courage and the capacity to more fully comprehend the effects – the truth and consequences – of one’s actions and behaviors upon one’s victims. It also requires a willingness and ability to dismantle the fortress-like wall of denial and disassociation that exists within many violent offenders. These are both very difficult challenges for offenders, but the current rate of recidivism suggests that these challenges require a somewhat new and different approach.
An initiative rooted in the principles of affectively-oriented awareness-building, the Accountability Project includes an offender education curriculum that is both cognitive and experiential in nature, and both inwardly and outwardly focused. This Accountability Curriculum focuses on what one has done, in addition to the “changing one’s thinking” process that is found in the more effective and traditional cognitive intervention curricula. The evidence clearly suggests that these programs are invaluable, but the fundamental operating principle at work in the Accountability Project is that offenders cannot easily or fully move forward into the future without properly addressing (in an affective manner) the harms and violations they have committed against others in the past.
The hope and promise of the Accountability Project and Curriculum is that it can help offenders transform habits of denial and minimization into a deep commitment to integrity and honest intention by facing the past and re-framing the future. It is the creation of firm foundations through shoring up – but not ignoring or avoiding – the crumbled foundations of past actions and behaviors.
For further information on the developing Accountability Project, contact Jon Wilson.