Five San Quentin men will be graduating from the Insight Prison Project (I.P.P.) after years of peeling back the many layers of their anger. Their soul-searching work has given them the coping skills to understand themselves as sons, brothers, fathers and husbands.
Robert Guillen, Randy Maluenda, Kevin Penn, Richard Poma and John Neblett will get their credentials from the Batterer’s Intervention Program. “I’ve been a part of the violence prevention program since 2006,” Maluenda said, “We go to the core root of the psyche to what causes a person to get angry. We call this the Male Role Belief System.”
This program sponsors self-help groups at San Quentin such as Katargeo, Victim Offender Education Group, better known as V.O.E.G., yoga and meditation. Robert Guillen a member of the program, began his journey in 1995 when it was called Man Alive. “A person has to be ready to change, especially if you’re doing a term to life sentence, because you have to prove your transformation,” Guillen said.
Peter Van Dyk started Man Alive. in the 90’s for men who had no skills to deal with domestic violence. Penn said, “I have been on this path for the last eight years. Violence prevention for me is living a non-violent life outside the Male Role Belief System. My wife does the same kind of work and we’re going to correlate this as a team for both genders.”
Neblett explained his own thoughts: “This class is about learning how to be a responsible man on an intrinsic level.” The course calls for complete immersion into unraveling implanted emotional triggers that lead to domestic violence.
Poma added, “The first half of the training identifies the different faces of violence, how we’re taught as boys and girls to uphold certain unhealthy beliefs.” Poma joined Man Alive in 2005 and now looks forward to being a husband and a counselor. “Because of a conversation that I had with my beautiful fiancée Susan, I learned something very profound. I don’t have to make someone wrong even if they are wrong, I only have the power to control my own thoughts, my own deeds and my own actions by the choices I choose to make.”
