Murals on the Prison Walls: Costanzo Law Firm Partner Redemption Row and Client Joel Abreu Featured in NBC News’s ‘Rehabilitation Through Beautification’ Segment
(Costanzo Law Firm pro bono client Joel Abreu discusses his murals for the “Rehabilitation Through Beautification” program at R.J. Donavon prison outside San Diego, California)
As part of its pro bono practice, Costanzo Law Firm works closely with Redemption Row California, a nonprofit organization offering compassion-based curriculums inside California prisons. Redemption Row provides prison residents with sociological insights towards real-life scenarios to examine how socially constructed categories interact with various institutions in order to decrease personal shame, antisocial attitudes, and violent behaviors among prisoners. Its mission is “changing toxic prison culture one dirt yard at a time.”
Joel Abreu is the Co-Founder/Director of Programming at Redemption Row. He is also a prisoner at California’s R.J. Donovan Prison outside San Diego.
Joel was sentenced to life without parole after a murder in 1997 in which he was present at the crime scene but was not the shooter. In fact, Joel was shocked and horrified when the shooter killed the victim.
Now, more than 25 years later, Costanzo Law Firm is fighting to get Joel’s prison sentence reduced based on changes to the felony murder rule in California and get him out of prison.
Joel is also an amazing artist and muralist who spearheads the “Rehabilitation Through Beautification” program at the R.J. Donavon Prison. Working alongside Lyle and Erik Menedez, Peter Lewis, and other residents of the prison, Joel works to beautify the prison space, painting murals on the walls of the prison, creating green spaces inside the prison, and training service dogs that meander through the prison hallways and provide prison residents with the love and loyalty that only dogs can provide. The “Rehabilitation Through Beautification” program is part of a wider array of rehabilitation strategies undertaken by R.J. Donovan to decrease recidivism rates among prisoners.
National prison advocates are now calling the work Joel does “The California Model,” based on the successful “Norway Prison Model” in which recidivism rates among Norway’s prisoners are just 20 percent—the lowest in the world. Joel and other R.J. Donovan residents are working to replicate Norway’s low recidivism rates by implementing similar strategies, including the mural project and other aspect of “Rehabilitation Through Beautification.”
(Costanzo Law Firm attorney Frank Zeccola with muralist Joel Abreu)
NBC News recently featured Joel and R.J. Donavon in an exclusive news segment. You can watch a short teaser on the program here: Rehabilitation Through Beautification
