1. INTRODUCTION
Background and Statement of the Research Topic:
Imagine if there were an antidote to hate, a vaccine for violence, a pill for peace. The world would be a much happier place. Although no such simple and quick cure yet exists, time— honored practices which date back twenty five hundred years are presently being used in prisons to help transform prisoners into peaceful and compassionate individuals. This "tranquilizer" is free, available, and all one needs is time, which people have plenty of in prison. This radical ground-breaking therapy is none other than meditation.
The idea that meditation can cure people from thinking and acting violently, comes from the philosophy that meditation eradicates suffering and promotes positive qualities in individuals. In this school of thought, violence, both mental and physical, is a byproduct of internal suffering. It follows that when suffering has abated, people will cease thinking and behaving in a violent manner. This theory has been tried and tested for centuries, and, time and time again the evidence demonstrates that through meditation, we can alleviate the causes of our internal suffering.
This paper explores how meditation has been used in prison to successfully transform inmates into more peaceful individuals. However, prison cannot reach all perpetrators of violence. Domestic violence (DV) is a type of violence that still largely remains hidden or unrecognized, and the individuals who may engage in DV as part of their daily lives may not even realize the extent of their own suffering. Furthermore, since partner abuse is generally not treated with severity, (and in some places not acknowledged as a crime), batterers (people who abuse intimates) often remain outside prison walls where they receive little punishment or rehabilitation. Though, in most states in the US batters are sentenced to complete an intervention program. Because DV is a byproduct of the power imbalances inherent in a patriarchal male society, it is one of the most pervasive and harmful types of violence in the world.
Looking at the successes of prison meditation programs, and examining the complex dynamics behind DV, my research explores how and if professionals working in the fields of DV and prison meditation believe that meditation can be used to stop batterers from engaging in partner violence. Do the research participants even think that it is possible to rehabilitate batterers? Since DV is a symptom of the power imbalances within a patriarchal society and is related to issues of power and control, do the individuals surveyed think that meditation alone will suffice to rehabilitate batterers? It is also important to investigate any barriers they have encountered or that they foresee to using meditation with batterers. This study serves the purpose of examining these questions with the aim of creating an alternative model which incorporates meditation, to offer batterer intervention programs (BIPs).