bart boekor
Rehabilitation
for the prison
0
HOMECOMING
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Bart Becker is a staff writer for The Daily Nebraskam
We all remember what we learned in school about prisons,
don't we? Prisons are the places we (it's always "we") put people
who can't interact normally with other members of society.
We put them there for their own protection and to protect
society. And prisoners who see the error of their ways are, of
course, grateful to our government for showing them how to
become more productive members of our society.
Although we call our prisons "correctional institutions," they
do little, if any, correcting. More often than not they turn a man
back into society more bitter and disillusioned than when he
entered the institution.
If, in fact, the purpose of the criminal law is the protection of
society, deterrence is an important factor in some cases. But in
the majority of the cases the protection of society can best be
achieved by the reformation of the offender.
We are telling him and telling society that we are sending him
to prison to try to reform him to make him a better man. And
we prove the lie of that statement by subjecting him to a period
of incarceration that is usually aimless and deadening and often
brutal and violent.
More often than not we succeed in extracting from him, in the
name of "correction", whatever dignity he possesses as a man.
Well-publicized murders, like those at Attica, are dismissed as
isolated phenomena. But they are not isolated at all. People are
murdered in prisons daily.
The inmates' uprising at Attica is a direct result of the racist
system which put them in prison originally, and keeps them there
in an attempt to strip their dignity from them.
It's time, then, we started improving conditions, both in the
prisons and in the society that allows them to exist Instead of
incarcerating men and subjecting them to the treatment of
untrained personnel, it would be better to provide security
training and plan for more probationary and parole personnel.
There are 800,000 men in this country on probation and
parole, twice as many as are actually in prison. The reason there
aren't more is that these 800,000 are served by only one-fifth of
the correctional personnel. As a consequence, huge caseloads per
probation officer are not uncommon. The situation is impossible
to cope with.
State Sen. Earnest Chambers of Omaha has called
incarceration in the Nebraska State Penitentiary "cruel and
unusual punishment" and has said prisoners "are treated here like
animals. . .worse than animals."
Warden Charles L. Wolff has said he is hopeful the Legislature
will plan to renovate the prison. He also said a skills training
center is being developed and plans are being made to develop
other training programs.
Wolff has said the prison is trying to prepare men to get back
into the community. The penitentiary's work-release program
currently sends 22 prisoners to work in downtown Lincoln. They
are returned to the complex each night Wolff said the plan will
expand to send prisoners to Omaha as well.
The warden has also said he will hire black teachers and
counselors if they are qualified. There are none at the institution
now.
In an attempt to rectify the damage done by our current
prison system, the people of Nebraska and other states might take
a long look at a plan that is going into operation in Maryland.
A Maryland governor's commission on law enforcement and
the administration of justice recommended that Maryland
implement a program of community corrections and that
offenders who don't require maximum security be maintained
and rehabilitated in their own community.
Community agencies are being utilized to support the entire
process. The underlying premise for the system is that crime is a
symptom of failures of individual offenders within the
community. The job of corrections, therefore, includes the
rebuilding of solid ties between the offender and the community.
The legal restrictions on the employment of convicted
criminals are being examined. One factor leading to the high
recidivism rate is a prisoner's knowledge that a conviction is a
badge he must wear for a lifetime. The society that exhorts him
to reform makes it practically impossible for him to earn an
honest living.
Lawyers are being asked to volunteer their services to ease the
pressure on the overburdened parole system. The parole and
probation programs could be immensely improved if competent
people could be trained as volunteer parole personnel. The
training of personnel, both security and rehabilitatory, is an
important step in straightening out the prison tangle.
Maryland's plan, if it works, will be the proverbial silver lining
behind the clouds. There are other programs in other states that
have equally grand aspirations.
It's doubtful that any of the proposed programs will work as
well as they do on paper, but any attempt to alleviate the
problems is better than looking away from it
Prison systems that haven't considered any renovation
program would be wise to do so before they bear the stigma of
Attica.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1971
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
PAGE 5