Soft Skills in Corrections – Offenders Teach Soft Skills at Folsom State Prison
The inmate facilitators of the “Pace Life Skills” courses at Folsom State Prison (Represa, CA), have created a powerful program to promote ongoing education, self-evaluation, and positive thinking among their peers. The inmate-led Life Skills program, a voluntary activity that occurs in the prison yard, boasts a waiting list of nearly 200 men and is celebrating its 10-year anniversary in 2023.
This unique program has clear positive effects on its members. In an effort to replicate their success at other institutions, the facilitators of the program have detailed a manual for teaching soft, “life skills” in a prison setting, from inmate to inmate. They utilize Pace’s Life Skills 25 curriculum, but the power to change lives comes from the facilitators and their teaching process and methods, which reach beyond the program’s weekly class and into its members’ everyday lives.
“Words are inadequate to express our appreciation of how profoundly Pace Life Skills has transformed our lives. We know that saying “Thank You” is not enough, therefore we want to show you gratitude by living what we have learned and dedicating our time to passing this blessing on to others.” ~Folsom State Prison Pace Life Skills Facilitators, Spring 2016
Those who teach know that to teach and develop ‘intangible’ soft skills is a difficult task. This task only becomes more nebulous and more difficult in the social atmosphere of long-term incarceration. Find insights about teaching soft skills to inmates, from the inmate’s perspective:
- Download the full text of the “Facilitator’s Manual.” (Oct. 2018) Future updates, addenda, or new editions of the Folsom Pace Life Skills Facilitator Manual will be posted on this page.
- Download “Narratives” written by Folsom Life Skills Facilitators. The Life Skills Narratives were produced for presentation to at-risk youth, as part of an outreach project to share lessons learned about soft skills development from within the Folsom Life Skills Program.
- Inmate Life Skills Facilitator Artwork (Narratives Cover Art)
- Inmate Life Skills Facilitator Artwork (Manual Cover Art)
- Folsom Life Skills Group Picture
- Learn more about the Life Skills 25 curriculum
If you are interested in learning more about this wonderful program, or would like to connect with this program’s sponsor, please contact Clint Massey directly at ctmassey@pacelearning.com or (205) 535-9759.
2023 Update!
Dr. Susan McKee of Pace Learning and Mr. Edwin McMillan, former Pace Life Skills facilitator at Folsom State Prison, have been recently featured in a series of blog posts on soft skills development in prison settings by Dr. Arielle Emmett. Read more from Dr. Emmett on her site or on Medium:
Arielle S. Emmett, Ph.D., Principal, Arielle Emmett & Associates, LLC
Member, American Society of Journalists & Authors; Contributing Editor, Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine; Fulbright Scholar Kenya (2018-2019)