We would be hard pressed to find another segment of our society where such massive amounts of money are being expended on such large institutions so blindly, without ongoing research programs to assure that such huge monetary expenditures are having a desired effect.

  In short, our prison systems are heavily invested in the punishment of prisoners. There is much substantial research that shows that punishment has nothing but a temporiary effect. Our horrendous recidivism rates across all prison demonstrate clearly that this philosophy does not and has not worked. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's our prison system. We have been doing the same thing repeatedly for decades and have gotten the same results, so we have increased the degree of punishment and got substantially worste results. Prisons are destroying families in massive numbers and recidivism and crime rates have not substantially decreased. Time after time I've seen prisoners go out just days after being released and commiting a crime then waiting for the police to come pick them up. When asked why they did this, they reported that they could no longer function outside of prison. They just didn't know how to get along or make it in the free world. Prisons are miserably failing in their primary mission of protecting the public.

  The most prevalent treatment that the million or so inmates in this country are receiving from our prisons is punishment, which has not only proven ineffective in halting recidivism, but leaves many inmates being released from prisons angry, confused, maladjusted and mistrustful of government, the judicial system and resentful of authority. The entire inmate population across the U.S. is being subjected to an impotent, poorly implemented and ineffective punishment paradigm that is deleterious to the health, growth and well being of us all. Viewed in a slightly different manner, punishment is the most prevalent treatment applied to prisoners in the U.S. with all the many negative repercussions thereof. This includes feelings we all commonly experience while being subjected to harsh punishment including an increase of hatred, anxiety and resentment, especially when it is not perfectly clear what one is being punished for. This is often the case with substance abusers and addicts who enter prison in deep denial of their problems and experience all the negative effects of being punished without a clear understanding of their problem. There are few inmates who punish themselves more than chronic drug abusers. On their own, they loose everything, families, jobs, houses and often their health. They end up living under bridges panhandling for enough money to get their next drink or fix. Women often turn to prostitution and contribute to the spread of AIDS. There is no more severe punishment than they have inflicted upon themselves. Punishing them more without treatment options might be viewed by some as cruel and unusual punishment.

  The second most pervasive influence that our society subjects all new prisoners to is long term exposure to angry, anti-social convict societies, laced with large numbers of maladjusted, cunning, hardened, violent, dysfunctional criminals who tend to accumulate within prison environments. Young, confused, impressionable, first time offenders seeking adult role models much too often find them in a variety of anti-social characters and drug abusing gangsters. Totally dependent on the prison system for their basic survival needs, first time offenders flowing into our prison systems in unprecedented numbers are subject to a forced inmate socialization process where they are taught to hate and distrust authority. Close contact by staff with inmates is considered by administration to be "fraternization" and is forbidden by policy leaving first time offenders completely vulnerable to the negative pressures from the surrounding inmate society to conform to the deviant and violent norms of that society. Over long periods of time, new inmates begin to think, act and re-act like the hardened convicts that surround them. Drug use, extortion, robbery, rape and violence are all normalized. Honest expression of any emotion other than anger or rage is considered weakness and marks one for extortion or rape.

  Over time, younger inmates begin to emulate other dysfunctional prisoners, learning to kill their feelings to cope in these harsh, ruthless environments and learn to disdain, avoid and manipulate authority. For example, if a new inmate witnesses the brutal, life threatening beating or rape of another, often to his surprise he quickly learns that any attempt to interfere or report such an incident could cost him at the very least, a severe beating by other prisoners and at worse, his life.

  Distorted and inhumane norms, vastly different from those common to free society, are being taught on an unprecedented scale to new inmates by the surrounding inmate society on a daily basis. Chronic criminals and gangsters within that society strictly enforce, reinforce and shape the behavior of new inmates much more proficiently than we as a society reinforce any kind of positive behavior on the part of these same inmates.

  Violence, rape, drug use and psychological terrorism are normalized along with victimization, extortion, robbery and sadism. Seeking approval and status, young inmates are recruited and used as soldiers by more practiced, malevolent gang members to carry out acts of violence and extortion often centered around the use and distribution of drugs, and gang control issues. After decades of immersion within such environments, with few if any positive programs to counter these pervasive negative influences, inmates are eventually released with these ingrained inmate values to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting society which is unbeknown, reaping what it has sown.

  Emotionally dead after long indoctrination to harsh inmate societies, prisoners released back into society having received little of no treatment are capable of inflicting enormous amounts of pain on others without a twinge of conscience. This is what they have experienced, learned and taught was normal for periods of time exceeding what many of us have spent in formal education. After years of imprisonment, harsh, cruel, cunning, deviant, violent dysfunctional behavior normal to inmate societies, such behavior is viewed as both normal and acceptable. Similar to a wolf being released into a pack of sheep, unsuspecting members of the free society are considered easy targets for robbery, sexual abuse and extortion compared to more wizened members of a prison society who have more practice in spotting such devient behavior coming.

  Unable to cope upon release, with few half way houses available to make the drastic transition back into a free society, lacking useful work skills and discriminated against with regard to employment, many ex-convicts see no other way to survive other than returning to a life of drugs and crime. Many, not having been taught any useful coping or work skills while in prison simply fall back into the same behavioral groove they had made for themselves prior to incarceration and begin living in the same manner. The punishment they received while imprisoned did not teach relapse prevention or new life and work skills, but merely increased their hostility, mistrust and resentment. From this point, it only becomes a matter of time before they are caught, found to have a criminal history, deemed unrehabitatable, a continuing threat to society and thrown back into prison costing taxpayers approximately $28,000 a year as the inmates becomes increasingly dependent on institutionalization for his care and upkeep.

  The Bureau of justice statistics reports that violent crimes committed by drug offenders are disproportionately high. In one BJS survey fifty percent of violent offenders in state prisons reported they had been under the influence of alcohol or other drugs at the time of their offense (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Drugs and Crime Facts 1994 Pg.6).

  By 1996 an estimated 23% of state prison inmates and 60% of federal prison inmates were incarcerated for drug offenses (U.S. Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Statistics, and Summary Findings.) Despite these findings, the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1994 reported that of all federal prison inmates only 9% were enrolled in some form of drug treatment as of June 1990. (BJS Drugs and Crime Facts 1994, Pg. 22.)

  In 1994 BJS did another survey finding that counseling was available for only 14% of inmates in Federal facilities and for only 12% in state facilities. (BJS Drugs and Crime Facts, 1994, Pg. 22) This survey says nothing of the quality of services for these people, only that help for substance abusers was UNAVAILABLE for 86% of all Federal general population inmates.

  By the same token, neither treatment nor programming was available for 88% of all state general population inmates at the time of these surveys. Again, these statistics say nothing about the quality or measurability of these programs. Some insight into the efficacy and efficiency of the few prison programs that did exist was provided by a Bureau of Justice Statistics paper which in 1994 reported that the two most common types of programs for both Federal and State correctional facilities was education and counseling. Both methods as currently applied are easily circumvented by inmates attending only for the appearance they have done something when they go to the parole board. These programs are easily beaten by inmates and are only available on a scale so small that they are totally inadequate to deal with the massive volume of inmates needing substance abuse education and counseling. Expansion of current conventional treatment and substance abuse education formats to serve a majority of current inmate populations would be prohibitively expensive, extremely inefficient with program output difficult if not impossible to measure.

  Blinded by the lack of research as to the effectiveness of conventional programs and without a system of measurement capable of accurately determining if prisoners were learning anything at all in substance abuse programs, for the relatively few treatment programs that prisons chose to implement, they relied heavily on the importation of conventional community developed formats. Such programs proved successful when operated within low volume community settings but were designed for much less disturbed and more motivated community populations than inmates within prison environments.

  Without solid research or a good understanding on the part of contractors of the inmate sub-cultures, correctional environments and treatment issues unique to prison populations, the implementation and expansion of conventional substance abuse and other psycho-educational programs based on community treatment concepts will prove expensive and inadequate. Their cost and eventual failure with much more chronic and disturbed inmate populations will likely continue to fuel accusations by prison administrators that prisoners cannot be rehabilitated.

Below is and outline of Computer Assisted Program performance compared to Commercial Group based program across prison units of about the same size. Although the commercial program claims to be for prisons, it does not differ significantly from other community-developed programs imported for use in prisons. Note that the operation of the commercial program requires many more times the amount of staff time for only a small fraction of the number of inmates served. Nor does the commercial program have any validly measured program outcome.

Figure 6.Click to enlarge.

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