White Collar Support Group
The World’s First Support Group Devoted to People Navigating the White Collar Justice System
We meet every Monday on Zoom. We held our 350th meeting in Sept. 2023. Featured in the New Yorker.
We are a community of individuals, families and groups with white collar justice issues who have a desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage we caused, make amends, and move forward in new way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance and empathy. Our experience shows us that many of us are suffering in silence with shame, remorse, and deep regret. Many of us have been stigmatized by our own families, friends and communities, and the business community. Our goal is to learn and evolve into a new spiritual way of life and to reach out in service to others. This is an important thing we are doing!
Over 750 Fellow Travelers have participated in our support group meetings from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin — and Canada, Israel, South America, Mexico, Europe, Scandanavia and the Caribbean. All have agreed this has been a valuable, important experience in which everyone feels less alone, and gratified in the opportunity to talk about things in a safe space only we could understand.
We also have a 24/7 Slack chat group (especially helpful if you need support in the middle of the night), a white collar job and career board, peer and mentoring support, a Tuesday Night Speaker Series open to family and friends, a newsletter, social media channels and our widely-read blog with over ten years of important content, news and events relevant to our community, advocacy initiatives, partnerships with other nonprofits, access to a wide array of resources, and much, much more. All freely offered on a volunteer basis by group members at no cost to you and your family!
As this support group is run by ordained clergy as part of a program of pastoral care and confession, we expect and believe it falls under clergy privilege laws.
We have formed agreements as to confidentiality, anonymity and civility, and have a basic agenda for each meeting:
1. Welcome
2. Serenity Prayer:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
3. Short Member Introductions, if we have new member(s)
4. Announcements & Resource Sharing
5. Guest Speaker and/or Topic Lead
6. Member Sharing
7. Closing
Login Instructions and Link are sent out weekly. We have set up an account with Zoom for our group, and you can log in via video on a computer, tablet or smart phone that is equipped with a camera, or audio only via phone. Please use headphones if you can so that we can minimize feedback and background noise. Each meeting will have a different meeting number to best provide confidentiality.
For Newcomers, I (or the night’s host) will be online fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the meeting. Zoom works wonderfully, however, it might take a little time to get comfortable with on your end if you’ve never been on this platform.
Thank you for referring other justice-impacted people and families: info@prisonist.org.
Email for Trulincs/Corrlinks: jgrant@prisonist.org.
Press & media inquiries: press@grantlaw.com.
If you have suggestions for other Fellow Travelers to join this group, please contact us to discuss. Our goal is to be inclusive.
IMPORTANT!: If you are currently on supervised release, probation or parole, it is important that you first discuss this with your P.O. To assist in this regard, information about our ministry is available on prisonist.org.
Please feel free to contact us if you would like to join in our next meeting, or with any questions you might have regarding this group, its meetings, or anything else whatsoever.
Link to Contact Info & Appointments.
Link to Testimonials here.
White Collar Week Podcast: An Evening with Our White Collar Support Group. The support group meeting on this podcast is different than most, because all of the 16 group members appearing have agreed to share their names, faces and very personal stories in an effort to reach out to individuals and families suffering in silence. All on the podcast are post-sentencing or back from prison. Watch on YouTube, Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or SoundCloud, Link here.
