Listening, Learning
We will identify the priorities and needs of the community we seek to serve:
We are gathering data and testimony from people’s lived experience and identifying the broader legal entitlements related to death, dying and bereavement in prison, including any disparities of impact on racialised communities.
Building on this research we will devise training to empower imprisoned people and their loved ones to:
- practice death rites that connect them through the prison walls
- assert their legal rights around death and dying where necessary
Empowering "Death Navigators"
We will train and support Death Navigators drawn from that community:
People in prison
People outside prison
People outside prison
- training for people sentenced to prison themselves to take up roles as Death Navigators for their prison peers
-the training will cover both legal rights and personal needs and wishes
-this model has been deployed in the US where there are prison hospices, and has had a profound impact
People outside prison
People outside prison
People outside prison
- supporting family members and formerly imprisoned people who are "experts by experience" to train as Death Navigators, and to educate other end-of-life practitioners about this vital work
- adding a prison component to the existing "Death Doula" trainings to enable them to function as Death Navigators inside and outside prison, equipped to liaise directly with the dying and their loved ones and with prison personnel, invoking legal rights and duties where necessary
Prison personnel
People outside prison
Prison personnel
- providing training for prison staff in order to encourage their positive engagement with the Death Navigator role and give them a deeper understanding of the rights and needs of people facing death, dying and bereavement in prison
-providing toolkits to advice groups and lawyers to promote rights enforcement
Theory of Change
Our work will lead to a transformation of people's experience of death, dying and bereavement in prison as follows:
Expose and Report
Facilitate and Train
Develop and Connect
Establishing and reporting metrics and lived experience of death, dying and bereavement in prisons
Develop and Connect
Facilitate and Train
Develop and Connect
Developing both legal rights-based tools for challenging poor practice and creative death rites thatcan connect people experiencing death in prison
Facilitate and Train
Facilitate and Train
Facilitate and Train
Training people to be Death Navigators and Facilitators in prison and in the community
Empower
Humanize
Humanize
Experience of death for people in prison and their loved ones is one of agency and connection rather than of powerlessness and trauma
Humanize
Humanize
Humanize
People in prison who work as Death Navigators recognise and reconnect with their own humanity and that of people around them, promoting rehabilitation
Resource
Humanize
Resource
People released from prison and their loved ones who have trained as Death Navigators are a resource for End of Life in their home communities
Build a Movement
Increase in public and institutional support for more humane policies and practices around death, dying and bereavement in prison
Get Death out of Prison
Death, dying and bereavement in prison is transformed and is least as well supported as these experiences are in the wider community, with no predictable deaths occurring inside a prison as the ultimate goal
The photograph on this page was taken by Annie Flanagan, who has documented the hospice work performed by prisoners at Louisiana State Penitentiary
-Deathrights is A community interest company - nUMBER 16385706
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