Prison as Therapeutic Community

I feel that we need an alternative to prison to prevent self injury and reduces the stress which causes such behavior.

It involves a ghost town and miles of fencing though. It might cost up to a billion dollars including the doctor, the staff and the business licenses.

Why not a therapeutic community in the sticks?

To prevent abuse of trust by staff, reward whistle-blowing.

To prevent prison escapes, all women make and sell products and services. If someone does escape, then it would be to avoid being a productive member of that community. Let the RCMP handle them.

Why it won't work: it "rewards" crime with a job opportunity.

This is what needs to be done to prevent self harm: women's prisons should not be punitive forms of rehabilitation of criminals. It needs to be viewed as a therapeutic community.

Otherwise, the middle management have lost the vision of what prison ought to be.

Review on PBS' New Asylums 2

The use of prisons as the asylums of the 21st century for the mentally ill came about after the State decided freeing the mentally ill from state hospitals and treating them in the community is cheaper than the costs of hospital maintenance, due to union wages rising since 1972.

That's when the first releases were done. From there, the State rented halfway houses from property owners to house mental health clients in an appropriate community setting.

However, a mentally ill person is treated like a possible criminal when his behavior is associated with a crime. Unfortunately, prison is bedlam when it comes to the mentally ill.

This video lacks that information, and appears to start from the second-half of the documentary itself.

Overall, I did not learn if any of the mental health clients improved as the filming progressed. IN the cases of patients who get imprisoned, the likelihood of that is rare since they have been in and out of prison for several years on petty crime charges.

My impression of prison is its use in maintaining stabilization of clients is negligable. The overall impression from this video I got was that criminally charging clients for petty crimes is not conducive to maintaining a stable environment for them.

Flashback to 2010: Prison Advocate Tam Phan Seeking Pardon from NY Governor

According to Democracy Now, when he was 6, Tam Phan arrived in the United States from Vietnam. He later became involved with a gang and spent 17 years in prison.

After turning his life around, he is now pursuing a master’s degree in urban policy and administration at Brooklyn College and is working at the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that helps ex-convicts reenter society.

Yet Tam Phan has been given a final deportation order, and his only recourse is a pardon from New York Gov. David Paterson.

He'll be deported back to Vietnam, yet has never been to the country and cannot communicate in Vietnamese.

It's only a matter of time before he may be deported if Gov Paterson does not pardon him.

Tam calls America home, having been raised in Brooklyn.

IMO it is precisely due to anti-immigration lobbyists pressuring mayors of major cities to pass anti-immigrant law that rehabilitated ex-criminals such as Phan face deportation.

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Reference:

Prison Advocate Tam Phan Seeking Pardon from NY Governor; Faces Deportation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiHYNK6ZRK4

The Fortune Society: http://www.fortunesociety.org/

Paris busted Out of Prison!

I just read that Paris Hilton who went to jail 3 days ago is out.

Tomorrow at 9 am sharp, she's going before the judge to determine if she's faking her mysterious medical condition.

My guess is that Paris is suffering from stress due to anxiety about being jailed with real hardcore criminals.

Here's my solution to deal with that, rather than let her serve time at home using an electronic monitoring device:

a package of 48 tablets of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) to sedate her for 20 days.

All she needs to do is take one 25 mg pill at bedtime, and if that doesn't work up to 2 tablets.

It will clean up her stress-induced rash and help pass the time sedated.