THREE KEYS INITIATIVE

Three Keys is an inmate designed and run classroom program located at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in southern Colorado. By occupying but not abandoning the communities—and even the gangs—that inmates claim, Three Keys offers a radically new path to productive citizenship, both behind and beyond bars. Participants move from achieving awareness of their specific condition and how their actions impact others (first key), to turning those newly-acquired skills to achieving personal self-improvement goals (second key), to ultimately shifting and transferring those skills to help others move through the stages of the experience (third key). The program’s founders, Rhidale Dotson and Cedric Watson, are working closely with the Lab as well as with the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at the University of Colorado to implement and assess this groundbreaking program.