Words from Avraham
About Avraham Hoffmann
Words from Avraham
At the foundation of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority in April 1984 (by virtue of the 1983 Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority law) we faced a huge void caused by the lack of systematic action in the treatment of released prisoners. Hence, it was no surprise that there was a “revolving door” between prison and the life outside prison for Israeli prisoners.
The Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority (PRA) was to create a revolution in the perceptions held by the judicial system, the police and the social services, by creating a new rehabilitation theory and practice. The articles on this website mirror and demonstrate this new approach:
6 major principles are the foundations of this new theory:
Principle 1: It is impossible to rehabilitate a prisoner in prison – during imprisonment we may give him tools that will help him during the rehabilitation process outside prison. Rehabilitation can only be done by free will and in minimum freedom conditions, which prison by definition, cannot offer. And only a continuum of care can achieve a real and sustainable rehabilitation.
Principle 2: Rehabilitation cannot be delimited to a certain period of time. Professor A. Twerski had taught us: “How can we tell that a released prisoner has really rehabilitated. Only when he departs our world without having returned to prison.” This means, that although we live in a fast and short term solutions era, the rehabilitation of a human being is a long process. The wisdom of the rehabilitation is based upon help and support given to the released prisoner, that decrease gradually, but that never stop.
This includes the ability and openness to come and help them whenever crises arise. And they can arise throughout their life, often because they are not ready yet to deal with them on their own.
Principle 3: In opposition to the wrong idea that rehabilitation can only be done by professionals. The new theory believes there should be a comprehensive cooperation of all the society in the rehabilitation process.
Rabbi Dov Soloveitchik offered an important definition for the link between the community and the individual: every person has a unique message to pass, a new colour to add to the community diversity. An individual who joins a community adds a new dimension to its public consciousness, a unique contribution. He enriches the public existentially and he has no substitute. The Judaism has always perceived the individual as a “small world”
Another innovative aspect of the new theory lies in our successful search for individuals and communities that would help and support individuals that have sinned. They help them to pass the bridge between the prison and the society in a safer way. Therefore, we cooperated with local municipalities, with the Kibbutz movement and Moshavim movement (the rural settlements movement and the villages movements), with Yeshivas (religious seminaries), Students’ unions, Women’s movements, volunteers’ organizations, and especially with “Friendly employers”, without whom no rehabilitation is possible.
Past criminology recognize the released prisoners’ crucial need for a financial reintegration into the work force, the need to resolve housing issues and a social protective environment, without which their rehabilitation would fail.
The participation of major social forces has enabled us to create a community that recognizes the need and possibility of released prisoners to rehabilitate. Such a community offers a strong support to the professionals and ensures they do not stay alone as “a voice crying in the wilderness”. The more we can engage diverse communities and organisations for the rehabilitation of Prisoners, the more we will be able to secure a better future for our released prisoners, during their long and difficult process. The hope for subsistence is a condition for rehabilitation.
We, at the PRA were aware of our programs’ weaknesses; however we believed that their advantages were greater, because of our fundamental conviction that without the society’s help and a coalition of professionals, we would fail as our predecessors did.
As in any social program, the success is dependent upon shared interests. Therefore the role of the PRA was to identify the existing social interests and engage them in order to cooperate and co-create the roadmap to a successful rehabilitation.
Principle 4: The prisoner’s family was an additional neglected issue. Without rebuilding the connection between the prisoner and his spouse, during the imprisonment and especially toward the release, the best rehabilitation program can fail. The prisoner’s children need a great deal of help and support during their parent’s incarceration. A good support helps the children and can become a leverage to help the rehabilitation of the prisoner, who may fail otherwise.
Principle 5: Rehabilitating released female prisoners – at that time, this was an innovative domain. All the experts warned us that we would fail. Thus we paved a new way for the rehabilitation of released women and even mothers.
Principle 6: Exceptional professionals are a condition for operating unusual programs. I had the opportunity to work with a group of women and men that have increased their level of expertise and professionalism to a level of artfulness. This website mirrors their fruitful work.
Finally, I am happy to thank my right hand in international relations, Varda Trauger. Without her creative abilities this website wouldn’t exist. There are few words that can express the gratitude I owe her for our breakthrough to the international world and the special status the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority has achieved at international conferences, namely the ICPA, and in Israel too.
This is also the opportunity to thank my family, and especially my wife, who has travelled with me around Israel to spread the rehabilitation message, and who has opened the doors of our home to rehabilitated prisoners, men and women, and thus proved to them that they were a part of us. Once, a former thief visited us at home. When he came back from the restroom he looked pale and I asked him if he wasn’t feeling good? Maybe he needed a medicine (my wife is a nurse). He answered me “I feel good” but when I was in the restroom I burst into tears. “Why?” I asked him, and he responded “it’s the first time in my life that I am visiting a home and I don’t steal.”
His answer reminded me the words of another released prisoner who worked at the construction site of Tel Aviv’s new central bus station (30 years ago). When I asked him how he felt about this hard work, he replied: “I always thought that afterlife is heavenly, when I work on the highest scaffoldings I feel I have reached heaven on earth.”
My hope is that the readers of this site will walk by our side with this belief and hope.
Avraham Hoffmann
Founder and First Director General of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority
About Avraham Hoffmann
Avraham Hoffmann, the founder of the Israeli Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority (PRA), from which he retired in October 2002 after serving it for 2 decades as its first Director General. He has published many articles about the different PRA programs, methodologies and philosophy. Since his retirement he serves as a Council member of the PRA and was a Social Policy and Criminology Lecturer at the Ariel University.
At the PRA, a state entity devoted solely to the rehabilitation of released prisoners and their families, Mr. Hoffmann had persistently striven for cooperation between the different authorities, agencies and the community to enable greater chances for successful rehabilitation (e.g. “friendly employers”).
He developed innovative programs to suit the special needs of the different populations of released prisoners (e.g. mothers with children, young inmates). “Everyone has a right to a second chance,” is the Authority’s leading philosophy. The PRA offers help to all released prisoners: men and women, Jews and Arabs.
Among his previous activities he was among the founders and a Council member of the Anti-Drug Authority. He received the Hazani Award for Social Work (1990); the ICPA Outstanding Contribution to the Association Award (2008); the Mayor of Jerusalem’s No.1 Volunteer Award (2014).
He was the chairman of the Jerusalem’s Volunteers Organisations Council, and a former board member of the National Council of the Volunteers Organizations. He has been the chairman of Idan – an Organisation for the treatment of elderly people in Jerusalem. as well as, the spokesman of the ministry of Labour and Social Affairs; Chairman of the Executive Board of the Child’s Development Centre, Jerusalem, and an honorary member of the JPSI (Jewish Prisoners Services International, U.S.A.).