A Word from Wayne...

The challenges facing all of us actively working to mitigate the damage done by our country’s criminal justice system continue to mount.

After the relative sanity of recent years, there are those attempting to swing the pendulum back to a more regressive approach that make our efforts all the more crucial. In our particular area of focus, prisoner rehabilitation and violence prevention, Jail Guitar Doors programming continues to be effective at changing lives and scalable to reach more of those in need. Our music-based rehabilitation programming is now in over a dozen California adult and youth facilities and expanding to more as word of the positive results of engaging prisoners in the creative arts spread across the country.

“In our particular area of focus, prisoner rehabilitation and violence prevention, Jail Guitar Doors programming continues to be effective at changing lives and scalable to reach more of those in need”

In recent months we have launched JGD programs in Massachusetts’ Department of Youth Services as well as NYC’s Rikers Island youth facilities. I am in discussions now with the Michigan Dept. of Corrections to bring a program to a state facility in my hometown of Detroit.

We are encouraged by the progress we have made in our first nine years and look forward to building more relationships with new coalition partners. The addition of recently returned citizen Kenneth E. Hartman to our team as Senior Grant Writer goes a long way toward building new capacity to bring positive programs to the most under-served populations.

Remember, ninety-five percent of prisoners will one day rejoin our communities. They will stand in line with us at the supermarket. Sit next to us at the movies. Work next to us, go to school with us, eat in the same restaurants and be a part of our shared civic life in every way. If we don’t help them change for the better while they they are in our custody, they will most certainly change for the worse. We ignore this reality at our own peril.  

Given real incentive and the necessary tools, people can and do change for the better. Join us in helping our country live up to the high ideals of justice, equality and the pursuit of happiness for one and all.

Wayne Kramer co-founder. 4.5.18