FOR A GOOD CAUSE -- Dan Millstein

-- Story by Andrew Glazer; photo by Conrad Lau

He says rehabilitating hardened prisoners is as easy as taking a deep

breath.

“It only takes a couple of seconds,” said Dan Millstein, director of

Costa Mesa-based Visions for Prisons. “They see us coming in there to

love them. How could they get angry at that?”

Millstein, 58, spends most of his time teaching meditation, anger

management and “attitudinal healing” to prisoners in Orange County and as

far as Brazil, South Africa and Pakistan.

He tries to help emotionally calloused prisoners find ways to connect

with their feelings through classroom discussions, private meditations

and breathing exercises.

“Every stick has two ends,” Millstein said from his office, a plush

room stuffed with books, intricate Buddhist paintings and a quietly

trickling fountain. “One is suffering, the other compassion. Most

prisoners need to learn to feel before they can feel compassion.”

It’s difficult to imagine Millstein using this New Age vocabulary with

thick-necked tattooed killers, rapists and thieves. But he said he can

usually penetrate their toughness by lacing his speech with frequent

four-letter words and references to his own speckled past.

“I’m an ex-drug addict and roustabout who felt a lot of suffering,” he

said. “By being me, I can show them they also can be something better.”

He boasts that 90% of the prisoners he approaches listen and

participate, with only the occasional heckler.

Some participants of Millstein’s program are now volunteers

themselves. Several lifelong inmates act as mentors for new prisoners.

They help prison counselors with suicide prevention, act as teachers’

assistants in prison literacy programs and volunteer in prison hospitals.

Others, released from prison after serving their time, have become

neighborhood role models.

One graduate, a former gang member who served a long sentence, started

a midnight basketball program for teens in his South Central Los Angeles

neighborhood immediately after his release, Millstein said.

“These prisoners had no self-love,” he said. “But once they learn to

love themselves, their whole life changes.”

Millstein said finding a good volunteer for Visions for Prisons is

very rare. Someone compassionate, forgiving, patient and committed.

“I don’t like to bring people there only once,” he said. “You need to

build a trust, so we need people willing to keep going back.”

Interested volunteers should call Millstein at (714) 556-8000.