3rd Entry, Prison Diary: Rehabilitation
Prison rehabilitation: Is it a maze or simply a concept?
The heavy prison security gate gave off its familiar buzz and then E. returned to the waiting room. She had that look of jubilance that only a mother, who has seen her son and knows he’s okay, can have. (See also Prison Diary segment #1 and #2)
In characteristic brevity, E. summarized her two-hour visit into two words (though in her Arkansas drawl it sounded more like four). “He’s fine.” I had a million questions about Jason: his state of mind, the environment of the correctional facility, his rehabilitation program, and her feelings. She did her best to answer every one as we drove back to Vienna for dinner and to find a hotel.
The next morning, we began the process of visiting Jason again. Armed with familiarity, E. breezed through the question and identification process. Happily and surprisingly, paperwork that I had submitted the day before, at the suggestion of one of the guards, gave me the opportunity to visit Jason as well.
Together, Jason’s mom and I prepared to enter the prison visitor’s area. In the waiting room, we bought cards to use as cash for the vending machines inside. We passed through a metal detector. Female guards patted us down for weapons. We placed the car key and our wallets in a cubbie, locked it, and slid the new key in my pocket. Both E. and I noted that the small metal hardware I’d just been handed as well as my hair pins could have functioned as weapons.
Accompanied by a guard, we went through a variety of spaces with locking mechanisms and attendants nodding at us. Eventually we entered into a large space, which felt like a Greyhound bus station waiting room — vending machines to the right; 20 or so tables to the left. The male guard left our sides and was replaced by a female guard sitting within a wooden enclosure from which she could see all of the participants in the room. One chair at each table had a red x and the identifying statement, “Inmate sits here.” Only two or three tables had visitors. No inmates had arrived yet.
We sat down and waited.
Vienna Correctional Center spends an annual average of $20,399 per inmate. Its mission is to:
Protect the public through a system of incarceration, supervision, and education by securely supervising offenders while providing a rehabilitative foundation for the offender’s reintegration into society. As an incentive to rehabilitate negative behavior and reinforce rehabilitative qualities, Vienna Correctional Center offers offenders access to a variety of programs.
I had a positive feeling believing our offenders were rehabilitated for reintegration into society. There’s a list of inmate programs (both academic and vocational) as well as a list of other activities including Life Skills, Anger Management, Chaplaincy, Library, Lifestyle Redirection, and Leisure Time Activity.
Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect. The rehab programs are not as available as I thought or hoped. Jason has written me frustrated. He wants to finish his GED, but the classes are full and there’s a long waiting line to get in. He’s also written that he wants to train in the culinary arts program. There, too, there’s a lengthy list of others before him.
Travis Hirschi has a lot to do with Jason’s frustration. Hirschi is not Jason’s cellie (jail cell mate) but a sociologist in the 1960’s putting forth his ideas about Control Theory and prisons. Hirschi focused on the question, “why do people follow the law?”
Hirschi argued:
- Self-control is learned in childhood and good parenting is the only way to instill self-control.
- Children raised in poor parental and socio-economic conditions are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior.
- These children are less likely to have meaningful relationships, do well in school, and function normally in society. Many will end up in prison.
- Prison attempts to impose upon those who have neglected the laws and norms of society, a form of self-control.
- The oft-stated end goal of incarceration is to rehabilitate the offenders by socializing them in a tightly-controlled environment free of the influences that led to their imprisonment.
Hirschi concluded that public policies that incarcerate with the intent to rehabilitate will continue to fail and that only socialization within the family can prevent delinquent behavior.
As a result of the criminologist’s work, states re-allocated funds that originally went to prison rehabilitation programs. They funded strategies that supported people who didn’t break the law, instead of ones that did, such as Pell grants — funds to help low income students attend college.
About 45 minutes after E. and I sat in the prisoners’ visitation area, a guard escorted Jason to our table. He was bigger than I had last seen him two years ago — heavier and more muscled. He wore the standard-issue blue shirt and darker pants and sported the beginnings of a beard. The broad, unreserved smile hadn’t changed. He was clearly surprised to see me. We all hugged.
To be continued . . .
Comments, questions, considerations, ideas? Hit reply or email the author at JOHaselhoef@gmail.com
Judy O Haselhoef, a social artist and author of GIVE & TAKE: Doing Our Damnedeest NOT to be Another Charity in Haiti, blogs regularly at her website, www.JOHaselhoef.com
Copyright @2015: Feel free to share this post with whomever you believe will appreciate it. If you’d like to use any part of it (up to 200 words), please give full attribution and this website, www.JOHaselhoef.com.
The post 3rd Entry, Prison Diary: Rehabilitation appeared first on J.O. Haselhoef, Author.
Originally published on J.O. Haselhoef, Author
