LINCOLN- State prisons are launching a new, “holistic” approach in mentally preparing inmates for their return to society, using fellow inmates as guides. A three-year initiative, started with an anonymous grant of nearly $900,000, seeks to better make ready inmates for reentry by focusing on things like healthy thinking, positive relationships and meaningful work.

The “5-Keys for Wellbeing Development” program replaces two existing classes, called “Thinking for a Change” and “Moral Reconation Therapy,” with an overall goal of preventing a return to criminal behavior and to prison. “Our goal is to approach reentry from that holistic sense of looking at the whole person, and not focusing on just one area,” said Dawn Renee Smith, the deputy director of Nebraska Corrections.

Nebraska will be the first state to try the 5-Keys program within its prison system. Officials have been working over the past year with faculty at Florida State University and a 2-year-old, Florida-based think tank called Well-Being and Equity Innovation Inc. The program will be launched full bore next year at seven state prisons.

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