I stay at the Blackwell Hotel, on campus. I go for a run. I throw a Frisbee around in the dark with some students. It is very warm. In the morning I join Leigh, another of the Case Managers, on a trip to a community project a few streets off campus: the Godman Guild, where Columbus residents can get, among other things, IT classes for $5 a throw. Leigh plans to see one of her clients at the class today – to see how she is getting on. The Godman Guild is based at an old school building in one of the city’s poorer districts. They provide children’s projects as well as adult education. It’s one of the places the TBI Network team rely upon – one of the places they can refer people to for the things they themselves can’t provide. The class is in full swing when we arrive and I don’t get a chance to meet Leigh’s client, only sit in the row behind and watch what happens. Leigh reports she’s doing well, however. On the way back I ask Leigh how much interaction there is between the college and the rest of the town. ‘Quite a lot,’ she says, ‘but given how many students there are, not that much.’ They certainly seem like different worlds – the world of the campus insulated from the community on its doorstep. It appears that the students live in a very concentrated (if large) area around the college, rather than being distributed throughout the city. I wonder what could be done to leverage this population of 70,ooo energetic (and well-off) students for the benefit of the permanent, and less privileged, residents of Columbus.
In the afternoon I go for a drive with Terry. Terry is the Network’s forensic specialist: he has chosen to work with the clients with more serious criminal records, including sexual offenders. He takes me down town. We pass the enormous statue of Christopher Columbus outside City Hall. We pass the State Supreme Court with its gold plinths and door frame, its fountain and its view of the river. Terry says they refurbished it recently. They spent two million dollars on paint alone. We cross the Olentangy and drive past an empty lot on its east side. ‘That’s where the homeless shelter used to be,’ says Terry, ‘until they tore it down. They didn’t want homeless people that close to the new developments Down Town. That high-rise over there, that’s where John Glen lives. Those are million dollar apartments.’
We visit the mental health and recovery project Down Town, we drive by the homeless shelter where it now resides. We drive through the neighbourhood and Terry points out the drug dealers. We visit the prison, out on the highway about three miles from Down Town. Immediately next door is the sewage works. The smell is powerful. ‘There’s no bus serving the prison,’ says Terry, ‘so when these guys get released, if they have nobody to pick them up, they have to walk down the verge. But it’s illegal to walk on the highway. So then you have this situation where people are getting released from prison and getting arrested on their way back to town. It’s ridiculous.’
'I was on a committee investigating crime prevention for the city. It took a year and cost a ton of money. In the end we had a five hundred page report. At the top of the list of things needed to prevent crime were access to mental health services and housing. It drove me crazy. I could have told them that without taking a year over it. We could have spent that money on any number of things.’
Terry introduces me to Susan at one of the Corrections centres on the outskirts of Columbus. Here they take felons - people who've committed significant offenses - and provide them with a programme of intensive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy aimed at reintegrating them after their sentences are finished. 'In each case,' says Susan, 'the judge has decided for whatever reason that the convict has the potential to get back into society in a meaningful way, decided to give them a chance.' She explains how the therapy programme works: 'We believe their thoughts are responsible for their actions. We believe these people have cognitive distortions that cause them to behave criminally. We believe these distortions have their origins in socio-moral developmental delays. We believe that they're not bad people. Here's a typical thinking error: if you don't get caught, you didn't do anything wrong. We're in the business of thought correction. We teach them T.O.C.: Think of the Consequences. We teach them T.O.P.: Think of the Other Person. When they come in here they have no victims. Some of the have committed multiple acts of domestic violence, but as far as they're concerned, there were no victims. When they get out of here, they're seeing the victims. They understand the consequences of their actions.' I like Susan's conviction. I ask if Thought Correction is all that's necessary. Is that the only thing involved in changing people's prospects? She thinks for a moment and then says 'Yes.' I ask if they need support getting into work?
'They're perfectly capable. When they believe in themselves, when they have the confidence they get from the programme, they go out and find their own jobs.'
She says ten per cent of their residents have TBI, ten per cent have schizophrenia, diagnosed. She says the ones with the disabilities are really good for the others. She says they all have to look after each other. 'We give them responsibilty for making sure the other people in their team get places on time, making sure they do their work. And they do a really good job with the guys with problems. It helps teach them how to take care of people. We used to put all the guys with diagnoses together in the same group. It was a disaster. It's much better now they're together with everyone else.'
Terry explains this project is on of a kind at the moment. It's having good results, but people are sceptical about it. I wonder what percentage of the current prison population fall into the same category as the residents here - people who might fairly easily be rehabilitated with CBT, people who are not traumatised or disturbed, people who are not yet career criminals, people who's only problem appears to be a lack of preparation for social and consequential cognition. Given the confidence with which Susan describes their progress, it makes me wonder how these people ended up in prison in the first place. One answer might be the Three Strike Rule now adopted in more than half the States, under which people who commit minor offences related to drugs or theft can be served mandatory life imprisonment if they have an existing record.
Terry explains that the trend in the US justice system is towards longer, more punative prison terms. Many state prisons have now adopted the Truth in Sentencing policy, doing away with parole and requiring violent offenders to serve at least 85% of their time. ‘In the US, prisons are big business,’ says Terry. ‘We have more prisons than colleges, more prisoners than students. There are far more black men in prison than in college. Is there something wrong with that picture?' According to CNN, the number of prisoners has grown from 2.2 million in 1982 to over seven million today. America is home to five per cent of the world population, but 25 per cent of its prisoners. Prison is expensive: to the tune of $200 billion a year. One wonders at the financial implications of this trend. Can a society that imprisons more people than it educates have any sort of future? Are their subtleties I am missing in this equation? According to the Joint Economic Committee of the US Senate, prisons in America also house far more people with mental illness than psychiatric hospitals do. The more I read about it, the more absurd the situation seems to be.
Terry is a Christian Minister. He says Americans have got the wrong idea about God. 'On our bank notes we have 'In God We Trust.' We need to take that off. Americans like to believe in the Santa Clause in the sky version of God. It doesn't occur to them that God has a sense of justice. We've been storing up problems for decades and now they're coming back to bite us in the ass.'
Image: Californian prison inmates, from LA Times.
Terry explains this project is on of a kind at the moment. It's having good results, but people are sceptical about it. I wonder what percentage of the current prison population fall into the same category as the residents here - people who might fairly easily be rehabilitated with CBT, people who are not traumatised or disturbed, people who are not yet career criminals, people who's only problem appears to be a lack of preparation for social and consequential cognition. Given the confidence with which Susan describes their progress, it makes me wonder how these people ended up in prison in the first place. One answer might be the Three Strike Rule now adopted in more than half the States, under which people who commit minor offences related to drugs or theft can be served mandatory life imprisonment if they have an existing record.
Terry explains that the trend in the US justice system is towards longer, more punative prison terms. Many state prisons have now adopted the Truth in Sentencing policy, doing away with parole and requiring violent offenders to serve at least 85% of their time. ‘In the US, prisons are big business,’ says Terry. ‘We have more prisons than colleges, more prisoners than students. There are far more black men in prison than in college. Is there something wrong with that picture?' According to CNN, the number of prisoners has grown from 2.2 million in 1982 to over seven million today. America is home to five per cent of the world population, but 25 per cent of its prisoners. Prison is expensive: to the tune of $200 billion a year. One wonders at the financial implications of this trend. Can a society that imprisons more people than it educates have any sort of future? Are their subtleties I am missing in this equation? According to the Joint Economic Committee of the US Senate, prisons in America also house far more people with mental illness than psychiatric hospitals do. The more I read about it, the more absurd the situation seems to be.
Terry is a Christian Minister. He says Americans have got the wrong idea about God. 'On our bank notes we have 'In God We Trust.' We need to take that off. Americans like to believe in the Santa Clause in the sky version of God. It doesn't occur to them that God has a sense of justice. We've been storing up problems for decades and now they're coming back to bite us in the ass.'
Image: Californian prison inmates, from LA Times.
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