The majority of substance abuse programs currently within our prisons are small, low volume affairs. They are often based on programs designed for community treatment populations and their effectiveness is difficult if not impossible to measure. Even the best of these are capable of reaching only a very small fraction of our large inmate populations. Unfortunately, the absence of large scale, rehabilitation programs to oppose the influence of a society of hardened criminals on young, impressionable, first time offenders often only leaves gangsters as the most prominent influence on their lives during incarceration.

  This ubiquitous society of anti-social, callous convicts teach younger more easily influenced inmates how to be cold and more proficient criminals by enforcing a philosophy of anger, negativity, cheating, robbery, extortion and might makes right. The relatively few, low volume programs that currently exist within our prisons have very little prospect of countering the massive, debilitating influence of long-term immersion in these massive criminal subcultures. Far too many inmates are leaving our prisons angry, dependent, hardened, dysfunctional and disillusioned with no money, few viable job skills, no place to go and an increased resentment and distrust of authority, government and the legal system. 

  With the realization that punishment was failing to stem crime and recidivism, prisons began importing substance abuse programs designed for use with very different, less chronic, community populations. Often prison officials could care less whether these programs were effective or not. The import of programs was an added complication to their jobs. Many are too ignorant to realize that large scale programs are critical inmate management tools. The only reason they many permitted programs at all were to relieve outside pressure that they do something to rehabilitate prisoners. Many prison officials were satisfied with giving the hollow appearance that they were doing something to rehabilitate prisoners and cut the recidivism rate. They could care less if prisoners cheated or slept their way through programs as long as the programs gave the appearance that they were rehabilitating inmates.

  The influx of these programs was driven often driven by external pressures, a quick solution to political pressure and by a marked lack of awareness regarding the very different nature of prison populations or how programs need to be designed to work with chronic, anti-social prison populations. Since imported programs had a decent track record in community settings it was mistakenly assumed that they could quickly and easily be imported into prisons and be work with prison populations. Prison officials searched for the cheapest, easiest means to give the appearance that some kind of rehabilitation was going on. Some legislatures put pressure on their correctional systems to do something about recidivism as the deleterious economic effects of a nation having five percent of the world’s population and twenty five percent of the worlds prisoners began to be felt in their pocketbooks and crime rates. It was not uncommon for prison officials to lie to their legislatures about the nature and size of these programs and to pad the numbers of both participants and ineffective programs available in the prison system to keep political pressure off their backs.

Importation of cheap, ineffective programs into prisons was also speeded along by the abundance of community substance abuse contractors willing to provide services to prisons, totally ignorant of the quirks of prison environments, the extent of inmate denial systems and the laws of the inmate subculture. They quickly learned. The result was that unwritten contracts were struck between inmates and contracted providers. These contracts went something like this. The inmates would communicate to the program contractors something to the effect of, "Don't make our lives any more difficult than they already are by measuring anything that you teach in this program and we won't make your time here easy. Earn your money and go home, otherwise, know that this is our territory and we will make your life miserable." A bargain was struck, the inmates would pretend to learn and the providers would pretend to teach. Nothing would be measured. The inmates would get credit for attending programs they slept through or gave lip service to and nothing would be measured. Consequently, inmates did not have to learn anything or prove that they learned anything. The contractors’ lives were made much easier by not having to measure anything inmates were supposed to be learning. They went through the motions of teaching. Prison officials would be sent of inflated and meaningless numbers to the legislatures to keep politicians off their backs. With no measurable result, and repeated failure to produce any measurable impact on recidivism, prison officials blamed inmates for not wanting to learn and added to the a myth that they were animals that could not be rehabilitated and should remain in prison. Citing security reasons, one of the most effective rehabilitation programs going was repeatedly restricted or banned from prison, Alcoholics Anonymous. Cocaine Anonymous groups were banned almost entirely as most if not all of their members had criminal records and somebody with a criminal record could not possibly be let back into prison once they managed to get out.

The absence of research into what would constitute effective programming for these populations and lack of program accountability generated many bids for low cost contract treatment for prisoners. In order to alleviate political pressure on them as quickly as possible to address prison recidivism, correctional officials took the path of least resistance. They imported programs designed for free world communities into the prisons. When these programs were imported into prisons for use with dramatically different, anti-social prison populations, they failed being rendered ineffectual by the forces mentioned above.

Conventional programs that did appear to meet with some measure of success within prison environments required massive infusions of cash to keep them propped up and expensive dedicated environments such as classrooms which are always in short supply in prisons. The few A.A. groups that were permitted into prisons were often utilized by many inmates for dramatically different reasons than intended. Large numbers of inmates in denial of their problems went to A.A. only to get some time out of their cells and socialize.

More nefarious still were the Gangsters that made extensive use of A.A. groups to pass drugs, information, coordinate assaults and run prison gangs from the back rows of AA meetings. Gang members with motives other than treatment are oblivious to the disruption they cause the small number of inmates serious about the AA message and recovery. Years of close study and observation of community programs imported into prison environments revealed that many were paradoxically failing when imported for use within prison environments for very same reasons they proved so successful within the community settings.

Putting aside a multitude of serious problems with the clinical effectiveness of conventional programs in prison environments, many of these programs failed to have any substantial impact on inmate populations for one very clear reason. Even the best of them could process only a very small number of inmates at any one time resulting in program volumes far too small to have any realistic or substantial impact on long term prison populations. In addition, very few of these programs made any honest effort to objectively and accurately measure what prisoners were learning.

Consequently, chronic substance abusers in deep denial of their problems are able to sit in conventional groups, easily feign participation and graduate without having learned anything at all. Some were able to con naive community therapists into believing that they were cured and would never again use drugs. Program treatment objectives were not being measured due to the extreme resistance on the part of inmates when faced with having to demonstrate they had learned something and the non-interference of prison administrators who put faith in a "magical" therapeutic process, of community therapists, a business which they knew little about and cared even less about learning.

This mystical therapeutic process was difficult if not impossible to explain and the typical prison administrator could not be expected, nor did they try to understand or oversee this treatment stuff. They trusted that the contractors and their staff often composed of newly graduated college students knew what they were doing. This kind of thinking plays directly into the hands of non-motivated, chronic, substance abusing inmates, in deep denial with little motivation to recover, and little to recover for. The result was that little or no effort was expended to measure what inmates were actually learning in these programs. It was a very expensive, don't ask, don't tell policy. Prison officials only wanted numbers to send to legislators to make them think something positive was happening in the prisons. Contractors only wanted to rake as much money from the system as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Contractors did not want to provide such touchy information, and even those few prison administrators who really wanted to positively impact recidivism trusted contractors to know what they were doing. Inmates in deep denial of their problems are fully aware of this and capitalized on it to invest as little time and effort as possible to get through these treatment groups.

Extensive interviews with graduates of these programs revealed that members could recount little if anything of what they had learned upon graduation from these groups. Practical experience with these kinds of treatment formats clearly revealed that if inmates are not validly tested over what they are supposed to be learning in programs, there is absolutely no assurance that they will have learned anything at all. With little effort, prisoners were easily able to con their way through group formats imported from community settings getting credit and investing little effort to learn.

Even if some paper and pencil testing measures were implemented, inmates were often easily able to defeat most attempts to manually test conventional programs. They accomplished this in a very short time by either stealing tests or using a variety of methods to circumvent testing and the intent that they actually learn something from the programs offered them. Check out the innovative collection of inmate cheat sheets presented along with this paper. It never ceased to amaze me that some inmates would spend much more time trying to figure out how to beat a program to circumvent learning anything than it would have taken for them to just buckle down and learn the material.

Without an objective means of measuring what if anything inmates were actually learning in programs there is no way to hold prisoners accountable for learning course content and facing up to their many painful problems. Attempts to manually test over program content was met with intense inmate resistance in the form of complaints to prison administration, theft of tests and cheating on a massive scale. Inmates able to cheat their way through paper and pencil tested programs could avoid taking the time and making the effort to study preferring instead to hang out with friends or watch TV.

More often than not, six months after paper and pencil tested programs were implemented; prisoners had stolen the tests which became part of the underground inmate economy. Copies of stolen tests could be sold for soda, food or drugs. Prison administrators could care less as long as the program was pumping out numbers. This is evidenced by the fact that every single computer assisted program set up within the Arizona Department of Corrections, over twenty in all over the years, was eventually turned over to an inmate clerk to operate. In the face of vehement protests on my part, these clerks were also given the encrypted passwords to the computers and their businesses were off to a flying start. Continued use of corrupted programs that prisoners could cheat or sleep through only served to reinforce already established criminal behavior. I saw that these programs were a powerful two edged sword. They could be used for the benefit of the inmate and society, or they could be corrupted by giving inmate clerks all the encrypted passwords, in which case they were utilized to reinforce the same criminal behavior that these people were sent to prison for in the first place. Prison administrators in overwhelming numbers condoned this. In order to stop these systems from being utilized to reinforce criminal behavior and cheating, I had to stop providing logistical support until each program run by an inmate clerk went down due to a failure of the old computers the systems were operated on. I refused to restart the program until it was run by a trustworthy staff member. Being on the payroll of the Arizona Department of Corrections as a Psychology Associate II, I paid dearly for this decision.

Prior to learning the real intent of prison officials and their attitude toward programming, I naively struggled to do what was possible to keep these programs operating validly. I naively believed that if an easy, effective, inexpensive means of programming thousands of inmates could be found, that it would be adopted. I struggled to find a means to validly test correctional programs to assure prisoners were learning something. It did not take long to comprehend that if program output with these populations could not be validly and accurately measured, most inmates learned nothing. Repeated attempts to test large numbers of inmates using traditional paper and pencil tests clearly and consistently brought to light the ease with which prisoners could defeat conventionally tested groups and programs.

The extreme creativity and effort put forth by inmates to cheat their way through any tested program and repeated failure of conventional manual testing to maintain program validity with these populations sparked a search for a better, more secure method of testing inmates. With the stark realization that valid testing of these cunning populations could not be accomplished by conventional means.

Completely naive as to the political and economic forces driving the prison system and the strength these forces would level against me for upsetting the apple cart, I began looking for solutions. Over ten years ago work was started on the development of an experimental program prototype, which would prevent inmate cheating and automate testing. This experimental format from inception was specifically designed to address the many difficult problems and failures encountered as numerous attempts were made over the years to provide "honest", measurable programs to large prison populations. These problems are detailed in the position paper to follow.

Naive and completely oblivious to political realities within the prisons, I proceeded in good faith and discovered that if psycho-educational programs were going to be operated validly and survive long term within correctional environments a combination of attributes that did not exist in conventional prison programs would need to be invented. In summary, these attributes consisted of efficiency, cost effectiveness, measurability, validity, high processing volumes and the ability to specifically address the many difficult problems unique to maintaining honest, high volume testing for large convict populations. Designed virtually from scratch for this difficult and complicated task, a computer-assisted prototype began evolving from lessons learned from the many failures encountered in attempts to manually test large prison programs utilizing the only means at our disposal, paper and pencil tests.

After years of trial and error experimentation, a new program prototype began to evolve. For many years a see saw battle with inmates raged as version after version of the new computer assisted program was in one way or another defeated by prisoners.

Many hard learned lessons were incorporated into a continually shifting program design to counter the extreme measures to which inmates would go to avoid having to spend their free time studying. Lessons learned from years of trial and error testing and scores of failures were incorporated into the design of this newly evolving program prototype. My poor wife, a computer programmer was on the verge of divorcing me over the many changes to the code necessary as computer literate inmates found ways to break into early versions of the computer tested program.

Eventually, this new system took on design characteristics which allowed the processing and valid testing of large numbers of prisoners in deep denial of their problems through a wide range of programs aimed at addressing the issues leading to their incarceration.

The continual evolution of this program prototype from its birth, beginning with the failure of manually tested programs yielded a very non-conventional prototype which became more complex as design features continually changed to counter the realistic challenges to validly tested programs. As the new prototype neared completion, the the computer assisted program format clearly demonstrated it ability to provide comprehensive, large-scale, high volume, fully measurable, self paced psycho-educational and substance abuse programs validly, efficiently and inexpensively.

Before becoming totally disgusted with prison administration, computer assisted prototypes were effectively providing a wide variety of fully measurable programmed services to approximately seventy percent of entire prison unit populations. These new prototypes achieved this goal at only a small fraction of the monetary cost and time required for the operation of conventional substance abuse programs while at the same time providing comprehensive inmate tracking and completely measurable program output.

After years of painful development, which would have cost over $50,000 in computer programmer time had I not had such a magnanimous wife, these systems had beyond a shadow of a doubt demonstrated their unique ability to take into account and overcome the many serious problems unique to providing honest, valid and measurable rehabilitation programs to large, cunning and resistant inmate populations. Unique also to these non-conventional prototypes is their unique ability to process over two hundred and seventy inmates in a single week through a variety of comprehensive, fully measurable, psycho-educational programs. Assuming a seventh grade reading level, this prototype is capable of providing programming to approximately seventy percent of entire inmate populations, far beyond the capacity of conventional program formats.

Due to the secure, high volume design of this prototype and the fact that computers do virtually all of the work associated with the testing, scoring and recording of inmate tests, staff time allotted to the operation of these non-conventional systems is dramatically magnified and enhanced. In larger program labs, it is not unusual for inmates to be spending 150 hours of time studying for each hour of staff time invested in operating a lab making this system one of the most powerful inmate management tools available to prison administration. Unfortunately, very few of these administrators were intelligent enough to realize this. Their idea of prison was punishment, not rehabilitation, this despite the fact that harsher and harsher punishment increased, not decreased their prison kingdoms. Perhaps this is my naivety showing yet again. Maybe this is what they want, to keep the prison industry rolling and their power over the miserable wretches under their control increasing.

Since inmates cannot cheat of circumvent this system when it is securely operated within its design parameters, prisoners must spend large amounts of time studying to legitimately pass computer administered randomized tests over the contents of programs. The amount of time these systems are able to productively occupy prisoners, makes this non-conventional prototype a potent inmate management tool with the capacity to positively structure massive amounts of inmate time with very little effort on the part of staff. Forcing prisoners to attend to, and legitimately pass exhaustive tests over carefully structured programmed materials; some programs have recorded in excess of 1400 waking hours of inmate time expended in the study of rehabilitative materials by prisoners within the period of a single month. Despite statistics validating the massive amounts of inmate time these programs productively and positively occupied inmates, the only thing prison administration was interested in was numbers. They failed to realize that if these systems were turned over to inmate clerks who were given the encrypted passwords to the computers that the program no longer functioned as a viable inmate management tool. Inmates merely paid for the clerk to arrange for the computer to post a passing grade. This inmate would spend no time studying or learning anything. I lodged complaint after complaint all the way to central office with regard to these systems being turned over to inmate clerks to run. All complaints fell on deaf ears. Prison administrators were not interested in rehabilitating anyone. All they wanted was the numbers. This had not yet dawned on me. I would have found it incomprehensible, unbelievable. I had to find out the hard way.

Rare as a hen's tooth, I found one warden who was as interested in programs as I was. He was ten years ahead in his thinking of any warden I had met in the Arizona Department of Corrections and light years ahead of the director. He fully realized that the very high processing rate of this prototype permitted the implementation of another efficient, low cost program which has proven itself effective in reducing the amount of illegal drugs entering prison units. When computer assisted programs were linked to a Front End Drug Interdiction, (FEDI) pioneered within the Utah Department of Corrections, proved startlingly effective. Prisons utilizing this program combination dramatically reduced the flow of illicit drugs into their units markedly lowering their number of assaults and associated medical costs.

What FEDI did in a nut shell was proclaim that any inmate caught using drugs posed a threat to the safe and orderly management of the prison. This was based on the fact that most acts of inmate violence centered on the drug trade. If an inmate was caught using drugs, his visitation privileges were taken until he had completed every single drug and alcohol program the prison offered. Warden House realized he was killing two birds with one stone. He understood that the vast majority of drugs entering the prison came in through visitation and not just visitation in general, but from visitors to those who utilized the drugs. The problem House faced with utilizing FEDI in the past was that conventional programs were not of a high enough volume to handle the amount of business FEDI generated and were quickly overwhelmed. The wives and family of inmates would vehemently complain to the director that they were being unduly punished as was their relative in prison. The director put pressure on House to limit FEDI. House stood defiant and said it should be adopted by the entire system. He cranked the program up full bore on the Cimarron unit and between FEDI and computer assisted programs, inmates were being programmed in record numbers. Inmates were stealing study booklets and giving them to their wives, and inmates don't steal anything they don't consider valuable.

Utilizing the two programs together resulted in a less volatile, relatively drug free and easier to manage inmate population. The FEDI program is described in detail in the larger position paper to follow and has the advantage of costing little of nothing to implement. If inmates can be forcibly kept honest, large-scale rehabilitation programs have the critical effect of permitting inmates to find direction and meaning in their incarceration by helping them understand their problems, teaching alternatives to maladaptive behavior and giving them positive direction on an unprecedented scale.

Providing programs to help inmates learn alternatives to dangerous, impulsive, anti-social dysfunctional behavior greatly reduces prisoner hostility by demonstrating an observable concern with regard to helping them help themselves. It is incumbent upon us as a society to do more than just warehouse our wayward citizens for prolonged periods of time in caustically negative environments where they are taught to hate and resent society and authority. If we do not provide the programs necessary to prepare inmates to become positive, productive members or society, to teach them to think and behave differently, they will continue to recidivate at current astronomical levels at the cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers every year. We can continue to only react to the problems posed by our prisons and at great expense, get what we have always got, increasing crime and astronomical recidivism rates. On the other hand, we also have the opportunity to do the right thing, and provide low cost, high volume programs to inmates affording them the opportunity to address their problems and become better citizens. The greatness of our society is measured by how well we treat the lowest of our members.

The concepts and information presented in the major position paper which follows makes it clear that we cannot solve the difficult and complex problems associated with providing effective, efficient, low cost, measurable programs to prisoners through traditional programs and conventional, thinking. The twenty plus years of research into prison programs summarized in this paper will give those open to it a fresh and realistic perspective with regard to programming these difficult populations. It is hoped that the detailed information provided here will allow others to proceed with the future development, improvement and expansion of non-conventional program prototypes such as described here. These systems have more than proven themselves through years of use on the frontlines in a number of different jails and correctional systems.

It is clear to me that any pressure to reform prisons is going to have to come from society, from the outside as the inside is rotten, corrupt and hopelessly ingrained in power, control and punishment. This was a very hard conclusion for me to come to. I and a number of other forward looking social work types had invested years in the development, testing and implementation of this programming system, only to discover that the only thing prison administrators were interested in was the massive numbers of programmed inmates it could produce. They cared less whether these numbers were legitimate or not. The discovery of this fact came as a stunning shock to me. In order to stop the Arizona Department of Corrections from turning over these programs over to inmates to operate, I went to the director of substance abuse programming located in Phoenix at the time and told her clearly that it took very little staff time to operate these systems in a valid manner. They were given the systems free, the least they could do was run them validly. I was told "You work for us, not the other way around. We will utilize these systems as we see fit. To which I responded that the computer code was not developed on ADC time. It was developed by my wife on her own time and it is copyrighted in her name. You run these systems validly and quit reinforcing inmate criminal behavior or shut them down."

Many thousands of dollars of computers that we bought at University Surplus were trashed as program after program went down after years of struggle and research. This is the kind of mentality I was faced with. Since then, I have made a number of offers to various prison personnel to restart these programs if they would sign a written contract to operate them with staff and within their operational parameters. I was called to Phoenix and scalded for demanding that "wardens" be answerable to lowly employee of the prison psychology department. Despite the fact that I was offering these systems free if the department would only invest the bare minimum to assure that they would be operated within their operational parameters, the offer was repeatedly declined. This is the attitude not just within this prison system but most all. One day the director of the Nevada Department of Prisons decided that no inmate would have any access to any computer for any reason. A score of very successful computer assisted programs running around the state were wiped out in the matter of a few seconds.

The political and economic reality of what we are facing in reforming prisons stunned and sickened me. I have since retired from prison work and am too weary from beating my head against walls for years to get viable, measurable rehabilitation programs instituted. For this reason, I'm offering this system free of charge to any who still have the energy and spunk to struggle with prison system to do something sane, provide programs to help people and not destroy them. Prisons should be places where people are taught to fix the problems they came in with, not destroyed. Prisons are currently creating people who have to kill all their emotions in order to survive in prison environments. When they come out they have no feeling or trust for others. The rules they play by differ significantly from those of the free world. After spending close to twenty years working in the psychology department of a large state prison, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that these institutions are islands of irrational, incomprehensible, self perpetuating social insanity. For any who adopt these programs, I will be expecting them to be shut down immediately if prison administrators turn them over to inmate clerks to operate.

I have no more energy to continue this fight. I offer this valuable program free of charges to those who in good faith do.

Jerry A. Marzinsky