In the East, an ashram is a place where people live for some period of time in order to strengthen their spiritual practice and self-discipline.
Many ashrams are very strict.
Residents, or ashramites , abide by an exhaustive schedule and live very simply, without many comforts or luxuries. In 1973, Bo Lozoff and Ram Dass came up with the idea to help prisoners to use their prisons as ashrams if they were tired enough of seeing themselves as convicts just biding their time until they were released. Ram Dass funded the work, and Bo began corresponding with prisoners and, with their feedback, developing spiritual materials especially suited to that environment. Neither Bo nor Ram Dass ever imagined that hundreds of thousands of hard-core convicts would be interested in such an idea. But within the first couple of years, the letters began pouring in and have not stopped to this day.