Faustino Garcia Zapico has dedicated his life to the population that he considers the
most excluded and mistreated – prisoners in his native Spain. In Spain, within three years of
release 60% of prisoners re-offend, often with a more serious crime. Using an alternative
prison model, which immerses prisoners in an education environment that teaches skills and
more importantly values such as empathy and kindness, Faustino has created micro-societies
that enable inmates to learn to live as they would outside the prison walls and achieved a
radical reformulation of the roles of the guards and inmates. The solution is working and
showing a huge decline in the rate of prisoners re-committing crimes upon release.
