…the Kronos Project is a novel that imagines what Root-Cause Rehabilitation might look like.
The Kronos Project takes place inside a fictional prison. A group of inmates is invited to spend ten months together looking at themselves, their relationships, their choices, and some of the realities that shaped their lives.
The novel follows the inmates through that experience. They begin asking difficult questions. What happened to me? What didn’t happen to me? What did I come to believe about myself? How have those beliefs affected my choices? Who have I become? Who might I become?
The novel explores these questions through the lives of its characters rather than through a curriculum or textbook. The inmates encounter ideas involving identity, beliefs, relationships, choices, consequences, responsibility, dignity, community, and other themes we now associate with Root-Cause Rehabilitation.
But understanding something intellectually is not the same as living it.
Ten months gives the fictional inmates something else—time. Time to interact. Time to make mistakes. Time to experience conflict. Time to build relationships. Time to make different choices. And time to begin experiencing themselves and one another differently.
That is an important part of the RCR thinking behind the novel. Looking upstream may help someone better understand how they arrived at this point in their River of Time. Lasting internal change, however, must eventually be lived downstream.
The Kronos Project does not present a formula for producing that change. It is a story. Its fictional ten-month experience allows us to imagine what might happen if inmates were given time and opportunity to examine some of the realities behind their lives—and then begin living differently while still inside prison.
It is one way we have chosen to explore Root-Cause Rehabilitation through creative content.
Interested in reading The Kronos Project? The novel is on Amazon. Or, we would be glad to send you a copy.