My dad shared this story with me about Vipassanna meditation (a ten-day silent meditation course I attended myself before Peace Corps) which is very popular in the most dangerous maximum security prison in Alabama. NPR has featured it three times in the last year, once in April and twice this past month here and here. So far the program has included hundreds of inmates who have volunteered for the program, many in for life without a chance for parole, reduced violence within the prison and "changed our lives" according to some prisoners. A documentary about this program named "The Dhamma Brothers" is featured on PBS this month, and is also available for download here.

This definitely makes me even more excited to conduct the meditation research that I've been planning here in Mongolia. Thanks for mentioning the story to me Dad!