It was imperative that this threat be neutralized and that prison administrators, concerned about inmate abuse of computers be set at ease. When these prototypes were initially set into operation, inmates who fancied themselves as hackers were not discouraged from attempts to break into early systems. This kind of informal testing in addition to years of front line use of these systems resulted in the evolution of a wide variety of security sub-systems. These sub-systems were individually and specifically designed to eliminate the threat of a break-in posed by hackers. Although the relative number of these inmates is small in comparison to the general population, the threat they pose is serious and required a quick solution. The variety of things a computer literate prisoner could do to an unmonitored computer was overwhelming.
 
  Overcoming the threat posed by these prisoners became so difficult that it could not be overcome without the assistance of computer experts far more brilliant in the area of computers than this writer. For assistance, we called on help from Jeff Proesis, contributing editor to P.C. Magazine and Steve Thornberg working in the corporate world. With their assistance, simple but powerful security subsystems were incorporated within this package without using massive blocks of code which would bog down the less powerful processors found in the older computers, but would still foil the inmate hacker. A number of different security systems had to be developed, including: 

  (1) Numerous hidden and encrypted passwords. 

  (2) An encryption program, which encrypts all program tests for long-term storage prior to program, shut down. Tests are only decrypted and actually readable immediately prior to program initialization. Consequently, test questions are available in a readable form only during monitored program operation. This had to be done due to inmate hackers who had previously broken into testing computers and copied down test questions or printed them out. For this reason, none of the lab computers was ever hooked to a printer.

  If attempts are made to randomly plug in keys to this system, the software will corrupt itself and freeze up the computer as evidence of an attempted break in. The computer would remain frozen until unlocked by the program manager.

  (3) A timed test feature prevents inmate abuse of the system when the system during operation, giving prisoners only small, measured amounts of structured computer access time and no time to hack. 

  (4) A locked testing loop confines inmates to one small part of the program during testing operations and prevents entry into any other part of the program or the computers operating system during testing. Exit to DOS or Windows operating systems is blocked and can only be accessed through a program segment guarded by an encrypted password.

  (5) To further eliminate any threat from the inmate hacker, the keyboard is completely controlled by the software during program operation. Keyboard input is confined to the five keys directly associated with answering multiple choice test questions. This sub-system blocks prisoners from using the computer for any other purpose than program testing. The entire system has been extensively tested after having been challenged by a very wide array of inmate hackers over several years of operation and has come through with flying colors. The program is completly secure when operated within its design parameters and the lab is monitored by a competent staff person during operation. Finding a competent staff person who cared enough to remain in the testing lab after they opened it up was another matter, and one much more difficult to solve. Prison administrators generally don't give a damn about programs that help inmates and more often than not turned a blind eye when staff assigned to monitor a lab left. This problem became so prevasive in some labs that I had to discontinue all support.

  The aforementioned features were developed over several years. Each successful inmate break-in was countered by the development of additional security systems added to the software package. The process of adding security attributes to the program to block hacker break-ins continued until there were four successive years with no reported hacker break-ins with the system being run within its design parameters.

  Despite these built in precautions, if prison administrators remain uncomfortable about potential inmate abuse of computers, the computer's floppy disk drives can simply be disconnected or removed, effectively blocking all means of putting any information onto the computer or taking anything off. This action would add another potent security measure.

  Once programs are mandated and CAPs implemented, the top 30 - 50% of the inmate population having a voluntary interest in addressing their problems are often the first to complete programs. The capacity of the Computer Assisted formats to process large numbers of students quickly leaves little time before we are face to face with yet another problem unique to prison populations.

   Once those inmates who volunteer for programs have completed, it is not long before we are with the substratum of the inmate population in deep denial of their problems, the inmates who are actively using drugs, with no interest in programs or addressing their addictions or any of their other problems. Often, these are members of gangs and require external motivation to get them to confront their problems. It is with this group of prisoners, more than any others that the stark differences between substance abusing prisoners and community treatment populations are strongly contrasted. Their consumption, sale and control of illegal drugs and their propensity for violence renders them a significant threat to the safe, secure and orderly operation of prisons. They are a constant thorn in the side of prison administrators. They are security threats and the gangsters who carry out the beating and stabbings.

   To reduce the threat to the institution posed by these prisoners, these inmates need to be identified, removed from their source of drugs, closely monitored and intensely programmed in an attempt to shatter their denial systems. Warden Tom House, retired after 25 years of service with the Utah Department of Corrections developed a brilliant plan for bringing these dangerous inmates under control and reducing the threat they posed. When his system was coupled with computer assisted programming a viable and inexpensive means of deaing with security threat groups was developed.

  After years of dealing with chronic substance abusing gangsters and studying how they operated within prison environments, Warden House designed an ingenious program to reduce both the institutional and security threats posed by these people. At the same time, the plan called for the restructure of their privileges in such a way as to motivate them to participate in programs in spite of the fact that many of them were in stark denial of any problem. His system requires no extra monetary expenditure on the part of prisons and often necessitates no additional resources.

   Warden House called his program, Front End Drug Interdiction or (FEDI). In order for FEDI to be practical, it needed to be combined with a system capable of high volume, measurable substance abuse programming. After spending a few hours comparing notes, we realized that these two programs were made for each other. When properly coordinated and executed and run together, the combination of the two programs proved very successful in reducing the flow of illegal drugs onto prison units. This consequently reduced the violence and gang warfare fostered by the drug trade within the prison.

   Associated with a significant reduction in the supply of drugs was a drop in the rate of inmate assaults and consequently a reduction in medical treatment costs. Virtually any warden running validly tested; high volume programs can successfully implement FEDI. The basic tactics of the FEDI program consist of treating actively using drug abusers as what they are, a significant threat to the safe and orderly operation of the prison. The second phase consists of acting to neutralize the threat posed by these prisoners.

   After many years of observation, Warden House realized that inmates who discover they are going to be moved to another prison unit, do not risk taking their personal drug supply with them. More often than not, they take their personal stash out of hiding and use it all up rather than leave it behind. As such, if inmates with significant drug abuse histories are tested for drugs upon entering a new unit, they often register hot and can be identified as active drug users and targeted for observation immediately. Drug testing utilized in this manner was found to be significantly more effective in identifying active drug users and gangsters than the random drug testing of entire inmate populations.

  After newly arriving inmates were found positive for recent drug use, FEDI stipulates that these inmates be placed into a higher institutional threat category based on studies revealing this group to be more prone violence, assault and rule infraction. As such, FEDI stipulates that they be more tightly monitored and drug tested more frequently than the general population. With the knowledge that most drugs enter institutions through visitation, these high threat inmates are often removed from ongoing sources of drugs simply by denying them visitation privileges.

  Frequently it is the visitors of active drug users who take the risk of transporting illegal drugs through visitation and into the prison unit itself. Cutting prisoners off from their drug source reduces the flow of drugs into the unit and the threat to the stability of the institution. In order to get the large numbers of hardened drug users identified by the FEDI program to address their addictions in spite of their powerful denial systems, it was stipulated that visitation privileges for these inmates would be suspended until they completed all the CAP substance abuse programs available.

Depending on how extensively the individual CAP labs were set up, this could take in a time frame of up to six months if the offender successfully completed and successfully tested over one self study booklet a week. Inmates were not forced to participate in any program, but visitation privileges were not returned until they could somehow prove that they were either addressing their addictions in some other valid fashion, or prove that their out of control behavior resulting in drug rule infractions would not continue to be a threat to the institution.

   Inmates caught abusing drugs could not think of any means to validly demonstrate to administration that they would no longer use or smuggle drugs into the unit or cease breaking institutional rules. Virtually all chose to program. More often than not, this choice resulted in large numbers of prisoners who normally would have never volunteered to be involved in substance abuse treatment to be exposed to and forced to learn large amounts of alcohol and drug related treatment and relapse prevention information. The overall effect was that in many cases, they were no longer able to deny having a significant alcohol or drug problems upon program completion. The shattering of their denial systems, came to an understanding of the disasterous effect they were having on their loved ones and opened the way for organizations such as AA and group therapy regimens to continue in the provision of treatment with inmates who were serious about addressing their problems. It was quickly seen that inmates who completed computer assisted programming and were only then placed in a group, utilized those groups for their intended purpose, addressing their drug problems. Such groups showed more serious and intense discussions, had better attendance and fewer disruptions.

  Although inmates caught in the FEDI net at first entered these comprehensive programs kicking and screaming, there were no staff directly in the line of fire toward which they could direct their rage. They were met face to face with a computer that cared less about how they felt about being caught using drugs and entered into substance abuse programs. The machines were programmed to validly test them and provide accurate, instantaneous feedback over precisely how much program information they had actually assimilated.

  In unprecedented numbers, prisoners learned about what alcohol and drugs did to them, their lives, their friends and their families. They began to realize how much damage they had done to their wives and children and how they had destroyed their lives with drug use. Many inmates began to wake up to how they had fallen into the trap of substance abuse and what they could do to begin digging themselves back out again. There was no therapist banging against their denial systems to provide a target for resentment and resistance. There were no other inmates leering at them from across a group room, or rubbing things in their face or spreading what was said in-group around the prison yard. Inmates involved in computer assisted programs were free to study programmed booklets where and when they desired, at their own rate for as long as they deemed necessary. A computer tested them once a week. They set their own pace according to their own intellectual capacities and reading levels. In an unprecedented fashion, they started studying together and helping each other prepare for testing. They began to steal the study guides in unprecidented numbers and send them home to their wives to show them what they were learning and convince them that they were trying to address the problems that had brought them to prison. Inmates don't steal what they don't think valuable and the increased thefts of programmed material was taken as a complement. At the same time, such thefts drove up program costs as new study booklets had to be printed out and copied. To address this problem, inmates were required to use their study booklets as admission tickets to testing. If they did not turn in a study booklet when they showed up for a test, they were refused testing. Often they would return with a study booklet they said was stolen only minutes later.

   Due to the implementation of FEDI, inmates in unprecedented numbers were directed into Computer Assisted Programs. There was also an unprecedented amount of grumbling and complaining when prisoners realized the massive amount of programmed information they were expected to learn.

   The grumbling further intensified when they came to the conclusion that there was no way to cheat or get around learning the program material. However, once prisoners became used to the increased effort necessary they settled down and learned the material. When program graduates began to appear, they were consistently requested to write up anonymous evaluations of the program.

  With their identity concealed, they were now free to blast the program if they so desired. There would be no repercussions and they did have a track record of blasting the majority of conventional substance abuse programs available to them. However, to our surprise, their response to computer assisted programs was overwhelmingly positive. It is our assumption that once they were blocked from cheating and left no alternative but to learn the material, they realized that they were learning about themselves and their problems, often for the first time. Program involvement increased markedly through word of mouth. Upon completion, many inmates with their denial systems down or weakened voluntarily began attending AA or requested admission to some of the few group therapy groups available.

Prior to the implementation of Computer Assisted Programs, wardens who decided to implement the FEDI program had no other alternative but to refer inmates identified as active drug users into convention group therapy programs. When the scores of inmates detected by the FEDI program were referred into conventional treatment groups, these low volume groups taking from six to twelve weeks to process only 12 to 15 inmates, quickly filled to overflowing. Overwhelmed, and unable to process the large numbers of inmates caught in the FEDI net, waiting lists to access conventional group treatment regimens spanned past the six month mark. Inmates lodged grievances and complained to the director. Warden House had a hard time holding his ground. Irritable prisoners deprived of their drugs and denied visitation while having to wait six months for a group to even open became hostile, restless and resentful. The increased pressure on group therapists to move increasingly large inmates through small groups markedly increased their stress levels and resulted in their scheduling longer break periods before starting another group. The situation changed drastically when a FEDI program was implemented on the same unit where a computer assisted program lab was already in full operation. Delays between the time an inmate was caught as opposed to when he could begin programming were totally eliminated. Prisoners could begin programming the very same day. Despite the great numbers of inmates being caught by the FEDI program and funneled into computer assisted programs, there was no backlog and long waiting lists dissipated. The direct benefit to security of combining the two programs was that gang influence; assaults and medical costs were significantly reduced. There was a short period of increased violence as addicts struggled over shrinking supplies of drugs available.

  Once drug resources dried up, the unit became much more stable. Inmates were emerging from computer-assisted programs in unprecedented numbers with a clear knowledge of their problems, what they had become and what they could do about it. This gave them a solid starting point to begin making changes.

   It is our belief that prisoners cannot make positive changes when warehoused in overwhelmingly negative environments unless they are assisted in identifying and understanding their problems clearly. As soon as their denial systems are weakened or dismantled, change begins to occur naturally. Many inmates don't have to struggle through groups or other expensive treatment regimens to learn about their problems. Once they clearly see their problems, they begin to make changes on their own. Breaking through massive inmate denial systems in order to arrive at these insights is quite a job and virtually impossible to do on any kind of a meaningful scale with large, dysfunctional prison populations-utilizing small traditional classes and groups.

   It matters little how good a traditional program is, if it only has the capacity to process very small numbers of inmates, without the ability to measure program goals, its overall impact on our large prison populations becomes virtually meaningless and you can bet that prisoners are either manipulating or cheating their way through. Prisoners are masters at making group therapists think that they are saving the world. This is especially true of novice therapists with little correctional experience.

   Inmates must be shown who they have become without judgment, or undue force. They must clearly see their place in society, their function as social beings and their duties and obligations to their fellow human beings. Above all, their responsibilities to themselves as individuals living with others must be made clear. Computer Assisted Programs can be used as a high volume mechanism to provide road maps to recovery on an unprecedented scale very inexpensively. It is entirely possible to help unprecedented numbers of prisoners navigate through their dark and confusing lives toward more productive functioning. The implementation of these non-conventional prototypes in prisons could increase the number of inmates receiving positive programming from the current 5% to an estimated 70% of inmates who can read at between a sixth and seventh grade reading level. The notion that prisons have put out to the citizens of the U.S. stating that prisoners cannot be rehabilitated or helped is a malicious lie. The same is true of statements made by some correctional administrators that the prison population has become to large to do anything with. The established track record of these programs has proved this.

  It was found that inmates completing computer assisted programs prior to being placed into more expensive, lower volume group therapies and therapeutic community settings were more motivated and less disruptive. With their denial systems broken, they were much more willing to honestly work on their problems.

   Placing program graduates screened through computer assisted programs into more expensive, low volume groups assured that the limited space available was being utilized by the inmates who had proven their motivation. Utilized in this manner as a high volume-screening device, CAP Prototypes can be utilized to keep prison systems from "casting pearls before swine."

   The high volume and quantifiable nature of CAP feedback in the form of test score generation has proven very useful as a rough-screening device indicative of inmate educational deficits, mental health problems, organicity, and inmates whose learning and concentration has been impaired due to mental illness or extreme stress. Program tests are constantly measuring an inmate's ability to concentrate, process information, remember and learn. These are critical components of any mental status examination. Marked deficits in any of these areas could be a significant indicator of mental illness, diminished mental functioning or brain damage.

   Since these systems can be programmed to test over any type of rehabilitation material, the expense of developing programs could be cut drastically by permitting some of the more highly educated inmates to help develop study booklets for different programs with information found in prison or public libraries. With the assistance of the inmates themselves, prisons could develop hundreds of different rehabilitation programs inexpensively and trade with other prison systems for programs they developed.

   One of the main motivations driving the development of this prototype was a distaste with having to witness prison systems implement programs which were ineffective and expensive because programs designed specifically to deal with the many unique problems associated with prison populations didn't exist.

   It is far from true that nothing works with regard to rehabilitating prisoners; however, one cannot shoot in the dark without any measurable feedback and expect to hit the target. This is exactly what prison systems in the U.S. have been doing for years. How can more efficient and effective programs for prisons possibly be devised without objective, fully measurable program output? Without testing and experimentation which is forbidden in prisons. Why do prisons continue to fund programs that provide no objective measurement of what they are supposed to be accomplishing? I'll tell you why, because they are ignorant and don't give a damn. Even when a number of prisons were offered this program free of charge if they would provide the staff and computers to operate it, they turned it down. It was just too much trouble to do anything to rehabilitate inmates. Their conception was that prison is for punishment and that inmates had nothing coming. Prison systems attract these kinds of people. Cadets are told in the acadamy that inmates are less than human, that they will be conned, manipulated and set up by prisoners if they let their guard down for even a moment. It is a devisive culture that feeds on itself.

   Virtually all behavior is mediated by learning and CAP systems guarantee that inmates will learn or clearly reveal that they have not. There is no guessing as to what inmates have learned in CAP programs.

   Computer assisted programs can go a long way toward addressing inmate problems when run alone, but are much more effective if inmates are provided group therapy upon completion to integrate the massive amounts of information these systems are capable of teaching. If he inmate chooses not to utilize the information he learned in these programs, he will at the very least emerge from such programming clearly aware of the damage he is doing to himself, his family and society. If after being thoroughly educated as to the dangers of his current path, if the inmate chooses to continue to pursue a course which is dangerous to both himself, his family he often does so at the pain of his own conscience, for he is no longer ignorant of the deleterious effect on his family and society. On the other hand, society has every right to protect itself. However, it is only after the inmate is thoroughly educated as to the danger he poses to society, himself and his family and validly tested to assure he understands that society can be sure that prisoners are not acting out of blind ignorance. Substance abusers graduating from CAP programs cannot deny that they have serious problems with drugs nor will they be able to continue to blame their problems on others.

  Our ability to both monitor and validly measure what inmates are learning in correctional programs is critical to the success of any realistic rehabilitation effort carried out in prisons. If the way inmates think is not changed for the better by the time they leave prison, how can society possibly expect any positive change in their behavior upon release? Computer assisted program systems are have proven on the front lines that they are capable of assisting hundreds of inmates a week to more clearly understand the factors that led to their incarceration and offering them maps to a more positive, productive life style. These prototypes are not so much teaching them as they are providing them with the means to teach themselves and then measuring what they are accomplishing.

  Over the fourteen years spent in the evolution and development of this project, the dedicated people involved refused to believe that an inexpensive, measurable, efficient and effective system of delivering rehabilitation programs to entire inmate populations could not be found.

  If we can develop the technology to send a man to the moon and back, why do we maintain that we cannot develop technologically enhanced systems to educate and redirect prisoners into a more positive way of life? Why is it deemed impossible to develop a means of providing rehabilitative programming to the millions of people we currently have incarcerated? We tested the systems we sent to the moon carefully and generated empirical data as to what was working and what was not before the project was implemented. Why should we not do the same with the millions upon millions of dollars we are investing in conventional prison programs? Why are we not demanding clear and objective data to determine how much if anything prisoners are learning in these programs.

   Why is the resistance to research and non-conventional methods of approaching the provision of programs being ignored or steadfastly resisted?

   If nothing else, it is hoped that this paper will bring into awareness the many serious problems and difficulties associated with the provision of valid and objectively measurable programs to prison populations. It is also the author's earnest desire that readers interested in the developing of valid prison programs clearly understand that many of these problems can and have been overcome through technology and non-conventional approaches to the problems associated with the provision of large scale, inexpensive programs to inmate populations. Continuing to ignore the many serious problems impeding the development of objectively measurable programs and blindly importing conventional formats into our prisons contributes to the public's erroneous perception that prisoners cannot be rehabilitated, a misnomer that ignorant prison administrators have fostered for years. This misinformation is dangerous and fosters the proliferation of the destruction of families and inmates ground up in abusive and neglectful prison systems. I don't think there are any of us who would not be concerned about the thousands of prisoners constantly being released into our towns and cities knowing that only 15% of them ever received any treatment for their problems prior to release. How can we possible expect them to change for the better after immersing them into a hostile, violent, negative, abusive, high stress environment for many years with few if any positive programs to redirect their thinking and behavior?

   What supporters of harsher and longer mandatory sentencing fail to understand is that punishment does not foster long term change, the death penelty is not a deturrand and that at some level we are all connected. How we treat others is both a reflection of what and who we are, and teaches prisoners who they are. What are we teaching these people by locking them up by the millions in these harsh and vicious gladiator schools with little if any measurable positive programming available to help them change? The overwhelming message is that you really don't care about them, and guess what? Upon release, full of anger and resentment, their feelings and
compassion destroyed, they are not going to care about what they do to you and your family. They spent years learning not to feel and care, to watch out for number one at everyone else's expense and to take what they want.

  Despite our denial and illusion of safety, there is probably not one of us who has not been or does not know someone who has been robbed or assaulted if not worse. The way we treat our prisoners comes back to haunt us and is in effect the way we are inadvertently treating ourselves. What comes around goes around.

  With their heads in the sand, many in our society delude ourselves into thinking that once a person is sent to prison they never get out again, or that they will have learned their lesson and never return to a life of crime again. Unfortunately, the reality that your politicians are reluctant to expose you to is that virtually all prisoners are eventually released. In addition, close to 70% of them return to a life of crime within three years. The number of prisoners incarcerated in this country is approaching the number of people we have involved in our colleges and universities!

  It is incumbent upon us and in our best interest to assure that inmates emerging from these massive and harsh institutions come out in better shape than they went in.

Our current policy of warehousing and punishing prisoners only contributes to the massive and costly crime problem, which is not going to go away on its own. We can be pro-active, and provide the kinds of programming that will help inmates become productive citizens now or pay later at the cost of about $20,000 per year for each inmate sent to these socially sanctioned gladiator schools. This reactive course of action and the one most commonly pursued at the present time leaves little prospect that you will be getting anything more for the massive investment than an increased probability of being assaulted, robbed or murdered. Would you invest in an expensive vehicle if you knew that there was a 70% probability of a massive, expensive failure within three years along the same vein as our 70% prisoner recidivism rates?

   It cannot be denied that there are a few successful, small-scale, expensive programs operating within our prisons that do a better more personalized job at educating and rehabilitating prisoners. Many of these programs take the form of therapeutic communities. It has been clearly shown that inexperienced operators of these programs are oblivious to the insideous tenticles of gangsters who make their homes in such communities giving the appearance to administration that they are trying to help themselves while planning hits and plying the drug trade under cover of the community.

   One would find it impossible to find a correctional program capable of matching the affordability, measurability, ease of operation and the massive scale with which Computer Assisted Prototype programs can deliver critically needed programming to large numbers of prisoners.

  "I believe we know at the highest level the We Are All One. It is this supreme awareness that pulls us toward each other, and it is the ignoring of it that creates the deepest loneliness of the human heart, and every misery of the human condition. Every sadness of the human heart, every indignity of the human, every tragedy of the human experience, can be attributed to one human decision-the decision to withdraw from each other. The decision to ignore our supreme awareness. The decision to call the natural attraction that we have for each other "bad," and our Oneness a fiction. In this we have denied our True Selves. And it is from this self-denial that all our negativity has sprung. All of our rage, all of our disappointment, all or our bitterness has found its birth in the death of our greatest joy. The joy of being one." Neale Walsh 1999.

   The information contained within this report compromises over 20 years of trial and error experimentation in the development of large-scale, high volume, measurable, institutional programs.

   I trust that this study will allow others to more fully comprehend the many reasons that conventional treatment programs fail when imported for use into prison environments.

   The utilitarian technology discussed here is available in its prototype form. However, it is hoped that software developers proficient in the development of Windows based software will pick up on the concepts and programming outlined here to develop more advanced reality based computer software to power CAP programs for the prisons of the future. The information in this report, and the report itself are not copyrighted. This material is intended for public use and consumption. It is sincerely hoped that a comprehension of the reasons behind the failure of conventional prison treatment programs will direct program developers to move toward the utilization of inexpensive computer technologies in the future. Computer Assisted Program prototypes have immense potential for providing inexpensive, large scale, realistic and objectively measurable prison rehabilitation programming in the future. It is in the best interest of us all that this be accomplished as quickly as possible.

Jerry A. Marzinsky B.A., M.Ed.

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