New book takes trauma-informed approach to prisons to help the incarcerated

Kevin Wright is the Director of the Center for Correctional Solutions and an Associate Professor at ASU’s School of Criminology & Criminal Justice. He joined us on “Arizona Horizon” to talk about the book. Wright has collaborated with an Arizona inmate on a book that examines why investing in healing prisoners would benefit everyone.

The book “Imprisoned Minds: Lost Boys, Trapped Men, and Solutions from Within the Prison,” was published in January 2025. It is the result of seven years of work from Wright and Erik Maloney, who is incarcerated at the Red Rock Correctional Center in Eloy.

The book tells the stories of six incarcerated men who faced traumatic childhoods filled with abuse, neglect and abandonment.

Maloney and Wright describe how this background puts young people on a path to “imprisoned minds,” and how a trauma-informed approach in prisons can undo the mindset and help the incarcerated people, prison employees and even victims.

When asked about the title and why he was inclined to choose it, he said that the title, “Prison Mind,” is a mindset where you shut off other people in your life; it starts very early on. 

“If as a kid you experience abuse or neglect, you start to learn people don’t care about me and you think, why do I care about others? You start to acting in ways in which you shutoff people in your life and think about yourselves. Oftentimes its out of survival. people start to give up on you, you burn your bridges, get kicked out of schools and its the decisions that make you trapped” said Wright.