DR. YEHUDAH PRYCE, DSW, MSW, served over 16 years incarcerated for a non-violent robbery he was arrested for as a teenager. While incarcerated, he helped design and facilitate personal development curriculum for his fellow incarcerated community members. Since his release from prison on October 22, 2018, he finished his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with an emphasis in social welfare; he graduated with his Master in Social Work degree from the University of Southern California (USC), where he was the chair of the student caucus group Unchained Scholars; and he completed his Doctorate in Social Work degree, in which his capstone project was “Person-centered Smart Decarceration: an MSW course centered on community members with a lived experience of incarceration.” He has experience working as an Intensive Case Management Services (ICMS) program manager for a South Los Angeles population that was chronically homeless with high acuity mental health challenges. He also volunteered for years as a psychotherapist at a residential addiction treatment center in Los Angeles that has an alternative sentencing department and has Lifers paroling directly there. In addition to his full-time job at Defy Ventures as the Senior Director of National Mental Health and Well-Being Programs, which involves working with community members who are incarcerated in prison and community members navigating reentry from prisons, he also works as a psychotherapist to incarcerated community members preparing for the parole board, and as a clinical social worker for the Orangewood Foundation Young Adult Court program (where he work collaboratively with justice-impacted transitional age youth, the presiding judge, district attorney, probation officer and public defender). Yehudah currently resides in Irvine, CA with his wife and three children.

Presentation topics include:
– From a Gangster in Prison to Orthodox Judaism: a journey of Teshuvah
– The choice of teshuvah: prison musings of Torah and mitzvos
– I’m a Jew, now, what?: heritage, purpose and drawing closer to Hashem
– Unbroken indigenous tradition: Jewish identity, Israel, and our covenant with G-d
– Am I wrong to think that you may be antisemitic?: Zionism, Antizionism, anti blackness, and DEI
– The Jewish tradition of smart decarceration: how the goal of Jewish tradition is person-centered rehabilitation and not punishment