The key findings regarding the use of the Transcendental Meditation program in prisons have been published in leading, peer-reviewed criminal justice journals. In fact, the inmates practicing Transcendental Meditation program increased more in one year than college students do in four. Other scales showed significant reductions in anxiety, aggression, tension, and introversion. The prediction that this inner development would produce behavioral changes after release was also borne out. With twenty-eight social and criminal history variables controlled by stepwise multiple regression, Transcendental Meditation significantly reduced recidivism, whereas prison education, vocational training, and psychotherapy did not consistently reduce recidivism.
Prisons are like pressure cookers for violence.
Indeed, one of the oldest methods for producing stress in laboratory animals is to isolate them in a small cage. Prisons exacerbate the very stress and weakness that led the individual to offend in the first place. The increased stress builds up in the very physiology of the inmate and breaks out in the form of violent and antisocial behavior.