Corrections Treatment: Money is Not the Answer

A recent article carried the "news" that there is a shortage of treatment facilities for offenders on probation or parole and that most offenders who are addicted to alcohol or drugs do not get the treatment they need even when it is court ordered

That news article prompted a visitor to the Alcoholism site to write the following letter "to the editor." It is published below, anonymously.

Money Not the Answer

The remedy suggested by the corrections people is -- as ever -- more money for the corrections people.

With the exception of the Federal system which is making enormous progress in this area, the darkest truth of the entire American corrections industry is that somewhere in the range of 60-85 percent of individuals under the supervision of the corrections industry are addicted to alcohol and/or drugs. The corrections experts have known this for many years and have completely failed to deal with it in any reasonable way.

Prison Drug Culture

Most experts on addictions believe that you cannot effectively treat an addiction that is still active. The first step in the true treatment of addiction is abstinence so that the brain, body, and soul of the addict can be fully present and functioning to learn some of the truths of recovery.

But most correctional officers and administrators don't want clean and sober inmates, probationers, and parolees. The majority of nonfederal correctional settings in America are awash in alcohol and drugs. The corrections industry supports the heavy use of alcohol and drugs in these settings.

It is lucrative for the guards and the community beyond the walls, and additionally it keeps the inmates quieter. Inmates obsessed with getting "high" are less trouble than ones seeking recovery, education and training, life skills, and release from the institution. The life of the guards and of the others who run the institutions is easier and wealthier if they support the drug and alcohol culture in correctional settings.

Cheap or Free

Unfortunately, it involves also supporting ongoing active addictions in the inmates, which in turn prevents both active treatment of addictions and active treatment of some of the problems that brought the inmates to the correctional system.

In reality, effective response to addictions is cheap or free. AA, NA, CA, RR and other approaches are often freely available to correctional sites, and are certainly freely available in the community to probationers and parolees.

"Treatment" by degree-holding individuals is probably only very marginally more effective and is certainly hugely more expensive than the approach offered by the above organizations. Indeed, I challenge anyone reading this to offer a reasonable amount of clear, scientifically acceptable, and reproducible evidence that "treatment" is demonstrably and qualitatively more effective than what is offered by the 12 step and other self-help organizations.

Wake Up, Smell the Coffee

I believe that there is no such evidence, and the reason is that "treatment" is little if any more effective than self-help programs. As a result, there is no excuse for corrections staffers to maintain their own current and destructive practices regarding addictions while they wait to obtain money in order to purchase "treatment." They can begin a more effective response to addictions this afternoon without a nickel more.

There is now and has always been massive need for correctional staff to wake up, smell the coffee, and clean their own houses to invite more extensive 12-step involvement, for example. If money is available down the road for some form of additional evaluation, medication, counseling, or whatever service is pertinent to those individuals who need something more than 12 step work, and of course there are many such individuals, then use the money to do just that.

Stop wasting lives right now by deferring action until more money is available for "treatment." That is a cop-out. The problem is not money for treatment, the problem is the attitude and behavioral of the correctional systems.

More Information

The Problem with 'Corrections'
Eighty percent, or more, of our prison population is there because of drugs and alcohol.

Another View of 'Corrections'
Those who work in Corrections are painfully aware of the problem of substance abuse within prison populations.

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