New York, NY – (November 21, 2013) – The world’s first product specifically designed to aid the social, emotional and communication struggles of formerly incarcerated men and women, and to help them to reintegrate with their families, friends, and communities, is now available nationwide.
RECHARGE Beyond the Bars Re-Entry Game arrives just as the nation reflects on freedom and blessings this Thanksgiving. However, an estimated 2 million men and women in the U.S. will celebrate Thanksgiving behind bars. While nearly 95% of these incarcerated individuals will be released at some point, until now, there has been little to assist most of them on the complex, lonely and demanding journey towards social and emotional reintegration into society.
Created by New York City psychotherapist, Leslie Robinson, and assisted by vindicated crusader of the legal system, Jeffrey Deskovic, a man wrongly imprisoned for more than 16 years, RECHARGE Beyond the Bars Re-Entry Game is a proven communication tool that provides a safe and enjoyable means for formerly incarcerated individuals and their families and friends to connect and reconnect in genuine, non-threatening, meaningful, transformative and sustainable ways. In its pilot stage, RECHARGE has had a significant impact on those who have utilized it, and the game has been enthusiastically embraced by even the most resistant people.
Deskovic explained, “When Leslie and I met, we immediately knew that working together we could make a significant difference in the lives of so many formerly incarcerated people and their families and friends. I wish I had Leslie’s RECHARGE game while I was imprisoned, and especially when I was first released. It was very difficult for my family and friends to approach me, and for me to approach them about certain feelings and situations. We had become strangers. I continue to use RECHARGE often, to help my relationships flourish and to help me to understand my reality.”
“The idea of communication following a traumatic experience such as incarceration is often the most difficult and frustrating challenge. For those whose lives have been filled with punishment and rejection, RECHARGE offers a new experience of acceptance, appreciation and validation and builds bridges back home,” Robinson said.
RECHARGE Beyond the Bars Re-entry game (MSRP $29.95 for teens and adults) includes an interactive card deck of 360 pre-designed questions and interactions, which provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated people to reflect on their lives and many aspects of their prison experience with one another, and with their family members and friends.
From fun questions to more challenging questions, the thought-provoking questions and interactions in RECHARGE offers an imaginative range of positive storytelling opportunities which address different aspects of the experience of his/her detention and of life. Examples of the questions include:
- Did you meet anyone who motivated you while you were in prison? If yes, how?
- What do you feel is one of the most important lessons you have learned about yourself or about life while being incarcerated?
- While incarcerated, did you ever speak to a person who would never come home? If yes, what did you talk about? Did you learn anything from that person?
- What is one of the obstacles you face that would make you think about going back to prison?
- How would you describe a difficult day in prison?
- What is the most important piece of advice you would give to someone going into their first day of incarceration?
- Do you like who you are better before incarceration, or after? Explain.
- Draw a picture of what inner peace would look like for you.
Robinson shared, “During the development and testing of the game, we conducted RECHARGE Beyond the Bars workshops at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, The Metropolitan Detention Center, The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, The Riverside Coming Home Program, Arches Edenwald, Rikers Island Correctional Facilities and other facilities where the game continues to be used on a regular basis. “Formerly incarcerated people, who had been non-communicative for years, found themselves effortlessly opening up while participating in this game.
Recently, Robinson began an ongoing RECHARGE program with the adolescent population at Rikers Island Correctional Facilities. Robinson, along with a team of formerly incarcerated individuals, facilitates bi-weekly workshops at the New York based detention center.
For more information about Beyond the Bars LLC and the new RECHARGE Beyond the Bars Re-Entry Game please visit www.rechargethegame.com, interact with the company on Facebook and Twitter, and see video demonstrations and testimonials on You Tube.
About Beyond the Bars:
Beyond The Bars LLC is a partnership formed with Robinson and Deskovic. The company is a complementary company to Deskovic’s non-profit organization The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which he launched in 2011. Deskovic was wrongfully convicted of a brutal rape and murder for which he spent 16 years in prison. Seeking to take a negative and turn it into a positive, it became his mission to fight wrongful convictions, firstly as an individual advocate, and later on by launching The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice with $1.5 million dollars of money awarded to him as compensation. The Foundation, the country’s only exoneree started organization of its kind, is dedicated to preventing wrongful convictions via raising public awareness and seeking legislative change to make the system more accurate, while also seeking to exonerate those who have already been wrongfully convicted, and then assisting them to reintegrate back into society.
About Leslie Robinson:
Robinson, an inventor and active psychotherapist with a private practice in New York City, is CEO of Trance4mation Games and President of Beyond the Bars LLC. Her new RECHARGE Beyond the Bars Re-Entry Game joins her other highly praised social communication, healing and transformation games, which include Warrior Spirit Mission Homefront, a Veteran reintegration game currently in use by all branches of the military, the Keep It Real Diverse (Diversity) game, in use nationwide on college campuses, and the Keep It Real (Original) game, in use at over one hundred Boys & Girl’s Clubs nationwide, and by families and others.
For product sales information:
Beyond the Bars LLC, 917-302-5086, Leslie@rechargethegame.com