Corrections_Today_Summer_2025_Vol.87_No.2

REHABILITATION

My first step was to take the idea to Eli Gage, CEO of CGL Companies, during the January 2022 Phoenix ACA winter conference. After explaining it he agreed that getting involved in promoting Twinning could be a worthwhile volunteer contribution for CGL if I wanted to take it on. My next step was with Reggie Wilkinson to enlist his help as a friend, colleague, a founder and the first VP of ICPA in 1999. Together we had success in 2022 at getting Twinning Foundation CEO Hilton Freund and several U.S. DOC directors to meet, col laborate and agree to start three Twinning Projects with more in the works. In early 2022 Eli was helpful in contacting his friend NBA/WNBA Commissioner Adam Silver to see if we might find interest from basketball coaches in addition to soccer coaches. With basketball courts in every U.S. prison and most jails, we agreed that basketball should be a much easier path than soccer for U.S. facilities and inmates. In 2024, that happened first in northern California’s Solano Prison. However, surprisingly, to Reggie and me, our first three correctional agencies have readily taken on the use of soccer coaches without any qualms. In February 2022 Correctional Leaders Association Executive Director Kevin Kemph did us the favor of sending a 1-page survey of ‘possible interest in Twin ning’ to all CLA members. From that nation-wide survey a Zoom video call was held by Reggie and me with Frank Porporino from Canada, plus David Dein,

Founder and Chairman of the Twinning Foundation, Hilton Freund, Foundation CEO and Jason Swet tenham, HMPPS Coordinator of all U.K. Twinning Projects. That call also included staff selected by directors or assistant directors from 13 U.S. correction al agencies.

Most recently we have received interested inquiries from some juvenile justice leaders in the U.S. and Hilton Freund has already begun work in the U.K. on engaging juvenile agencies as well.

Where is it now in the USA and beyond? At the beginning of 2024 three Twinning Projects were underway: New York City, Los Angeles and Florida City, Florida. From the February 2022 Zoom call noted above the first USA Twinning project started on Febru

ary 28, 2023 at the New York City DOC Anna M. Kross men’s facility on Rikers Island with New York City Football Club coaches. To date they have completed five gradu ating classes. The LA County Sheriff’s Department Century Women’s Facility was next on April 18, 2023 involving a 3-coach team from the Angel City Football Club. Thay have graduated two classes with a third underway. The Florida DOC started on January 11, 2024 with two Miami Foot ball Club coaches delivering classes at their 2,000-bed men’s medium security Dade Correctional Institution in Florida City. Two classes graduated in 2024 and a third is underway.

Photo courtesy Hilton Freund MBE, Global CEO Twinning Project

Corrections Today | Summer 2025

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