Wild Horse Inmate Program

Chapter 1
Wild Horses-Wild Men

I had come to this prison to study the wild mustang and learn what effect, if any, working with horses might have in the practical rehabilitation of hardened inner-city criminals. What I saw was a miraculous transformation I don’t think anyone could have imagined. I certainly hadn’t.

The inmates were trying to gentle the horses, but in truth the horses were gentling the inmates. The process of gentling wild horses to fit into human society was simultaneously gentling “wild” humans to fit back into the same society. I had not only watched the use of cheap prison labor save a great American icon, the wild mustang; I had witnessed the unintended healing of lost souls.