A version was published by the FCN 1999

The Incarcerated Inmate’s Characteristics

The passage from the unrestricted life style to the features of life behind bars obviously involves a process of adaptation to the incarceration shock. The inmate becomes an anonymous personage belonging to a downcast group. He develops new manners to eat, sleep and work. Some of the inmates develop additional adaptation methods, such as gambling, homosexual behaviour and drug abuse. Many of them develop hostility toward the institution employees and their fellow inmates. The most extreme aspect of this process may express by passiveness, apathy, indifference and lack of response to degrading and hard attitude.

This adaptation to demands of the imprisonment may harden or even prevent the acclimatisation of the released inmate to the world outside prison. Martin Webster (1971) found out that released inmates are characterised by:

1. A lack of planning for long range and an emphasis on immediate needs;
2. A difficulty in accepting authority, although they had no choice but to follow orders in prison; and maybe this difficulty should be viewed as a rebellion against the prison conditions.
3. A weak capability to withstand frustration and pressures, even the least ones.
4. A will to show manhood and to solve problems in an independent manner. This is caused precisely by their vulnerability and need for help. The need to hide their weaknesses prevents them from acknowledging their weakness, and consequently from seeking and receiving adequate assistance.
5. A suspicion toward professionals, a fear of being rejected and distrust of the establishment.

In addition to the freedom deprivation, the society supports a long and severe additional punishment that is unofficial and maybe contrary to the law’s spirit. It expresses by social banning and constant suspicions toward the criminal. Some researcher have described this attitude – stigma – as the main factor for the released inmate’s return to the crime world and hence to prison. The social convention, according to which the inmate will eventually revert to his evil ways, is preventing the inmate from reintegrating into society.

What is rehabilitation?

The released inmate’s will to abandon his previous life style and integrate into the  law-abiding society is not enough to ensure a success. Society must help the released inmate who wishes to do so by softening the difficulties of the passage from one life style to another one, and by fighting against his criminal stigma.

In the research community as among the society at large, there are two opposing views concerning the need for rehabilitation and the chances for its success. The pessimistic view claims that: once a criminal always a criminal, and so why work hard at trying to rehabilitate them. The positive view, sometimes even too optimistic, on the other hand, maintains that any prisoner may be rehabilitated. This view’s disciples propose to shorten the incarceration period.

Both theories misuse the expression “inmate’s rehabilitation”. The first assumes that rehabilitation is a perfect process’ and that a criminal that does not complete it cannot be perceived as being rehabilitated. The other theory assumes that any offender may complete successfully the process. The reality shows that rehabilitation is a perpetual process in which the participant pits himself against himself and others. A judgement that uses absolute criteria to measure their success might miss the goal and promote an unbearable feeling of failure, both among the inmates and their practitioners. The Israeli Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority (PRA) was founded to stop this theory and to promote the belief that rehabilitation is possible, from a realistic perception of the inmates’ ability to do so.

The first failures in the released inmates’ trials to get rehabilitated may be critical, because they serve him as a proof he has no chance of rehabilitating. In contrast to the difficulties of the rehabilitation, adventures, easy money and his criminal friends’ admiration seem to him attractive, a compensation to his failure. They seem to strengthen his self-esteem. Researches made in the United States have indicated that the highest rate of failure is found in the six months following the release from prison (most of which concentrate in the very first months).

Many researches have studied the possible variables that influence the return of released inmates to crime and consequently to prison. In spite of that there is still a difficulty in evaluating the “success” or “return to the right path” of offenders. This difficulty is caused by the difficulty to define delinquency since it is a complex phenomenon of the human behaviour.

What do inmates worry about?

When the PRA was funded, we conducted a surveyed with 148 inmates to enable us to plan the methods and procedures that will prepare the inmate toward his release. We wanted to learn from them about the main problems that worry them and that dealing with may have consequent and positive implications on their chances to rehabilitated (The Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority, 1986). The survey’s main findings were:

1. The employment difficulties preoccupy them more then any other problem (71% of the inmates).
2. Although 75% have no vocation or vocation certificate, only 8% have participated in a vocational training course in prison. 36% have expressed their will to study a vocation in prison, and 62% have expressed this wish to do so after their release. 59% of the questioned had primary education or lower.
3. 41% of the inmates have debts that might cause them to go back to crime after their release.
4. 7% of the questioned are homeless; 69% want to change their housing and, 58% of them are demanding to do so due to the criminal environment their present home is located in. It should be noted that the housing issue stands as the second important among the problems that bother them.
5. 55% of the responders have mentioned problems with their parents at different degrees of severity; 20% have mentioned problems with their wives and 29% with their children.

Preparing an individual rehabilitation plan in co-ordination with the Prison Services

There should be a distinction between the rehabilitation activities done in prison and under the prison services’ control, and the activities of the PRA directed toward the life outside prison. During the period preceding their release the inmates are anxious and confused in regard to their future. It seems that these characteristics of their situation may increase their willingness to co-operate in planning an individual rehabilitation program. For these two reasons – the willingness to participate in a rehabilitation program and the PRA’s presence as representative of the “outside” world – the PRA starts working in prison 90 days before the inmate’s released. This is also a condition required to the realisation of programs that necessitate an early preparation and it also enables the examination of alternative rehabilitation programs, if the chosen one is found to be inapplicable.

This individual rehabilitation plan is called the “Contact program” – which is a therapeutic contract that states its conditions. The Authority’s law (1983) stipulates that the PRA will set the rules for the rehabilitation of inmates. The PRA has formulated regulations to the operation of the “Contact program” – therapeutic contract. This program is meant to establish the procedures by which the parole committee refers an inmate to the different rehabilitation programs and community services.

According to the “Contact” program the PRA is committed and responsible for the application of the inmate’s therapeutic contract. The contract in which he committed himself to participate in a community defined therapeutic program after his release. This program is approved after three conditions are fulfilled:

1. The community prisoner rehabilitation counsellor, with whom the inmate has signed his therapeutic contract, has given his consent.
2. The PRA’s director general has approved of the contract.
3. The program becomes a part of the inmate’s parole conditions approved by the Parole Committee.

The in-accomplishment of the Committee’s decisions obliges the PRA to report to the Parole committee. The “contact” is a program supervised by the PRA in the community, therefore its operation requires a clear and defined procedure. The program is adapted to a well-defined and particular population. The “contact” period will amount to a maximum of one year from the release.

An inmate is referred to the program according to the following criteria:

1. He is recommended by the social worker in the community, based also on the recommendation of the prison social worker. They have checked the inmate fits in and understands the nature and requirements of the program.
2. The inmate has not been using drugs for at least 6 months, according to the Prison Services.
3. The inmate shows motivation for therapy and rehabilitation.
4. The inmate can attend meetings and interviews outside prison.
5. He has a permanent housing.

The principal role of preparing the individual rehabilitation plan is assigned to the social workers in prison and to the PRA regional counsellors. They have received professional training to diagnose and treat inmates’ problems. Among the activities that can help planning a rehabilitation program are:

1. Searching and gathering all the information concerning the inmate to produce an accurate image of his situation in prison.

The information sources may be the following ones: The prison education officer that deals with the completion of education and participation in cultural and leisure activities; Security forces in charge of supervising drug abuse (by conducting urine tests) and criminal society; The employment co-ordinators in charge of vocational training and teaching working habits; physician, psychologist, and psychiatrist.

• Checking the willingness of the inmate toward the future:

Among the parameters checked are:

1. The inmate’s willingness to participate in a rehabilitation program.
   1. The inmate’s inner strength to cope with pressures and crises in the process of accomplishing his rehabilitation program.
   2. The inmate’s will to break his contacts with the delinquent world by changing his housing environment in an extra-community programs (residential hostels, shared housing with university students, etc.)
   3. The inmate’s will to create contacts with a volunteer therapy agent.
2. Preparing the individual rehabilitation plan – “Contact” therapy contract:
   1. The program will be set upon the detection of supporting agents for the inmate’s family in the community, in therapy services and among volunteers.
   2. Referral to employment, studying, or vocational training.
3. Assistance in specific problems:
   1. Accelerating judicial procedures of open trials by the PRA’s counsellors.
   2. Assistance in settling debts (fines, lawyers’ fees, alimonies, housing, debts to friends).
   3. Assistance in tattoos removing.
   4. Assistance in arranging identification card.
4. Guidance of the prisoner and his family:
   1. Guidance as to the ways to make an effective use of community services,
   2. Giving information about in-community and extra-community rehabilitation programs.
5. Assistance in developing special projects in the community:
   1. Signing up the inmate on the “referral of the inmate’s family” form for treatment in the different social services, as soon as the inmate is incarcerated.
   2. Integrating the inmate in groups’ projects for his wife and children and organising specific programs for inmates’ wives and children in the community.
   3. Signing up the inmate on the “referral to the PRA form”, in order to prepare a community or extra-community “contact” program.

Subject to be dealt with in rehabilitation plans

The PRA in co-operation with the prison services have raised 21 domains to be used in the preparation of an individuals rehabilitation plan. Among them were: The contact with the local social welfare agency and the National Insurance Institute; The inmate’s savings from his work in prison; Employment diagnosis by the PRA employment co-ordinator and the employment bureau; Housing issues; Education; Health and mental health; Drug and alcohol detoxification; Debts; Alimony; Open police dossier; Divorce process; Etc.

Following are detailed descriptions of special actions taken in some of these fields to improve the process of preparing the inmate toward his released.

Employment

As mentioned before, we have defined rehabilitation as integration into the law-abiding society. The absorption into the work world is one of the major assessments to the rehabilitation’s success.

Dr. Ariella Levenstein (1980) found that the more a released inmate has professional skills, the better are his chances to reabsorb into society. She also found out that 40% of the released inmates are non-professional workers. In the same context it is worth mentioning the major findings of the 1985 inmates’ survey:

1. Only 48% of the questioned worked for a substantial period of more than a year before their incarceration. 10% did not work ever.
2. Only 25% have defined themselves as professionals with a vocational certificate. 40% lack any vocation.
3. 60% were employed in factories within and outside prison, or have joint a vocational training course.
4. 33% expressed their willingness to integrate any work position.

Released inmates have a history of failures in normative environment and a lack of perseverance at work. 75% of them have no vocational training, and lack working habits. Most of them have even no elementary education, and have a history of drug abuse, a lack of stability in employment as well as difficulties in accepting authority. They apprehend their superiors and co-workers’ attitude and, feel they are perceived through stigma. Therefore, they come to work tense and burst for minor reasons. All of this makes it harder for them to become used to a steady work place.

Many efforts are made in the field of released inmates’ rehabilitation, in their detoxification from drugs, in emotional therapy, and in family therapy, but without any solution in the employment field, any investment may be for nothing. A lack and failure in employment are one of the major factors for going back to prison. Some of the released inmates have succeeded in drug detoxification, but difficulties and pressures due to their employment, or emptiness caused by their unemployment (such as poverty), bring despair which facilitates the way back to drugs.

Namely, the employment rehabilitation is a crucial and complementary vertebra in the inmates’ rehabilitation. A survey conducted by the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority (PRA) showed that the more the inmate acquires working habits, while being accompanied by a person in the process following his release, the better are his chances of being reabsorbed into society.

Therefore the PRA has developed an employment assistance program. The program consists of helping the inmate in finding a job and keeping it. He will be able to attend a vocational training to better his chances of finding a suitable work position. The PRA employment co-ordinator works at finding “friendly employers” who are willing to employ released inmates. He keeps in touch with the employers and employees (released inmates). He organises an employment support group for released inmates. To allow the released inmate to fit in his working place socially and culturally, the PRA operates clubs for the leisure hours for released inmates who work. In these clubs the participants receive enrichment, and that through lectures on different subjects (such as current political and social issues), they attend theatre plays, movies and different social activities.

Housing

The PRA has concluded an agreement with Ministry of Housing. The Ministry of Housing is giving a priority to inmates in the first year following their release in case they have no housing arrangements but have joint a rehabilitation program. Each inmate receives 150 US$. Up to date the Ministry has never refused to help an inmate the PRA has referred.

Social therapy

Levenstein (1980) found that most of the released inmates were dissatisfied with the therapy in the community services. Some of them explained they had indeed turned to receive help from the community services but stayed in touch only for a short period.

In the past the representatives of the social services had little awareness about the ways to deal with a released inmate. The social workers feared the inmates because of their image as dangerous persons. The inmates interpreted this fear as a weakness. As a result, they did not accept the social workers as people that can help them.

To change this situation the PRA together with the social welfare agencies have had meeting to change attitudes among professionals, to give guidance and assistance for acute problems. This was done to make the agencies open their doors to released inmates. In addition seminars were given to social workers. In some of the seminars released inmates and their wives were present to promote the social workers awareness. In many settlements a joint team is dealing with released inmates. The teams are composed of the different authorities and agencies’ local representatives: The PRA, the Social Services Agency, the Employment Bureau, the National Insurance Institution, the Ministry of Housing, the Adult Probation Service, and the Police. These teams prepare a comprehensive and binding rehabilitation program for the released inmate that returns to his community. The fact that the program is agreed upon by all the concerned agencies and in co-ordination with the PRA prevents manipulation of the released inmate. In the past these manipulations have caused the programs to fail. In many settlements the PRA operates voluntary associations who’s members visit the inmates in prison and serve as a person they can turn to for help after their release.

Police

The police’s attitude has weighty importance in the released inmate’s chances to rehabilitate. The PRA has attained a series of arrangements with the police to ease the released inmate’s reintegration into society. Among the decisions are: Minimising police interrogations during the inmate’s working hours; The PRA’s authorisation to receive police information about the involvement or non-involvement of an inmate in criminal activities; The PRA’s explanatory activities among policemen and the involvement of law representatives in the PRA’s activities such as seminars for social workers and inmates’ pre-release courses.

Tattoo removing

Tattoos are an obstacle for released inmates when they contact employers. Often it has prevented them from being employed. Although apparently this is a merely cosmetic issue, which has no medical significance, with time the awareness to the psychological aspect of tattoo has risen. Many professionals today agree that removing a tattoo may be a major component in one’s rehabilitation. It seems that the inmate’s willingness to remove his tattoo signifies leaving the criminals’ “professional union”. It is important to note that inmates that have removed their tattoo during their incarceration have encountered hostility from their fellow inmates.

The Special Prisoner Rehabilitation Programs and the The Individual Rehabilitation Plan

During the inmate’s incarceration the prison staff may use a range of rewards and sanctions to help the inmate better his ways. When the inmate leaves prison, he must be surround by a range of regulations to help him control his ways, despite the freedom or precisely because of it. The PRA has developed two fundamental ways to rehabilitate released inmates:

The first way is the inmates’ return to the community: This way includes many risks of going back to crime, while at the same time it has the advantage of going back to living with his family a real life.

The second way is intended for inmates that would fail should they choose to return to the community: We remove them from their natural community by a range of solutions:

1. Rehabilitation in Kibbutz and Moshavim – Rural agricultural co-operative settlements, where the inmate is adopted by a family.
2. Religious theological rehabilitation in Yeshivot.
3. The 3-in-1 Apartment Program: The student-prisoner shared housing program[1].
4. Residential Hostels: including 5 hostels for released male inmates, the Hostel for released Female Inmates, the Hostel for released Female Inmates with Their Children, and a Hostel for Former Prisoners Who are Family Men and the Hostel for Former prisoners Who Where Incarcerated for Violent Behaviour toward Their Families[2].

Courses in Prison Preparing the Inmates Towards their Release

As aforementioned, only a sufficient preparation that offers the released inmate a minimum reply to his anxieties and the problems he foresees may diminish the trauma caused by the passage from a prisoner’s status to the citizen’s status. The course has 4 goals:

1. Giving the inmate an opportunity to express the expectations and anxieties he has upon his release.
2. Bridging between the life inside and outside prison. By providing information about the services and institutions available to released inmates and to citizens in general. This information is intended to provide the inmate with a realistic basis.
3. Introducing the inmates to the establishment. The purpose is on the one hand to create a deeper understanding of the inmates, to abolish the stigma ascribed to inmates by the establishment employees, and on the other hand to increase the inmates self assurance in their future meeting with the establishment.
4. Creating an additional tool to help the PRA’s counsellors to prepare the inmate psychologically towards his release. This is done in parallel to planning the individual rehabilitation program.

Government officials, Judges, industrialists and public figures participate in these courses voluntarily. Besides these general preparation courses, it is worth mentioning there are courses aimed at specific aspects, such as the Course for Married Men.

Voluntary Activities

There is an extensive literature dealing with volunteering in general and with volunteering with released inmates. Martin Webster (1971) found that one of the main motivation the released inmate has that encourages him not to go back to prison were his personal contacts. That is, a commitment toward a close person that presents for him a symbol of good will from the law-abiding society. When this assistance is offered voluntarily, the inmate perceives it as a personal commitment no to become entangled with law, much more then with help given to him by the establishment because of his legal rights.

Blackman and Goldstein (1986) presume that reciprocal relations with friends in the normative community may reduce the released inmate’s recurrence to professional personnel when they are in crisis. Moreover, since inmates are often suspicious toward the establishment and the professional employees, expecting to be rejected by them, volunteers may serve as intermediary between the released inmate and the professionals. Hence create confidence in community services.

According to Stein (1970) volunteers may contribute to raise the public’s awareness and interest to the released inmates’ problems. Volunteering may be perceived as the public’s readiness to tolerate and accept the released inmate. Schwartz (1971) refers to the first period following the release as an intervention into crisis. The practical help and emotional support in this period have a major importance. Hence the volunteer has a significant role.

In light of the aforementioned, the PRA has granted chief importance to pairing volunteers to released inmates. The Authority perceives it as one of the most effective ways of accompanying the inmate in the critical period of returning to the community. Indeed this belief is stated in the PRA’s law.

The innovation of the PRA’s volunteer program is not the volunteering itself, which of course existed prior to this project, but rather the forming of an obligatory professionally oriented framework for the volunteer’s activities. Each volunteer is carefully chosen and must undergo an intensive and comprehensive training program, including meetings with the social workers. The volunteer is matched with an inmate 90 days prior to release and meetings take place in co-operation with the prison social worker. To ensure continuation of the relationship, the volunteer must be from the same community as the inmate.

Conclusions

After 15 years of activities, we may assert that the rehabilitation of the released inmate is not only the professional’s affair. Only the combination of public figures, businessmen and volunteers with the professionals’ activities will ensure a rehabilitation process.

We have no power to rehabilitate inmates. Rather we have the power to create possible ways for the rehabilitation of the inmate who chooses to rehabilitate. We may even say that: with a comprehensive social effort we have the ability to remove obstacles from the inmates process toward rehabilitation. The creation of social openness, and public awareness that perceives the rehabilitation of the released inmate as a prospective possibility, strengthen the inmate’s readiness to choose the rehabilitation path and abandon the belief that “no matter what I do, I will always be an offender in the public eyes.” The deepening of this public awareness creates an appropriate foundation for the professional to accomplish his function with social consent.

Bibliography

Blackman, S.H. and K.M. Goldstein, “Some Aspects of a Theory of Community,” Community Mental Health, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1986).

Fox, S., “Families In Crisis Reflections on the Children and Families of the Offenders and the Offenders, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative, Criminology, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1981).

Gold, M., Status Forces In Delinquent Boys (Michigan: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1963).

Hirschi, T., Causes of Delinquency (Berkeley: Berkeley University of California Press, 1969).

Libby, T.N., “The Residential Center For Released Prisoners St. Leonard’s House Windsor, Ontario Canada, Journ, Corrections, 10/12 (1968).

Meiner, K.G., A Halfway House for Parolees (San Diego: California West University, Federal Probation, 1965, 29/2).

Morris, P., Prisoners and Their Families (London: George Allen, 1965).

Schwarts, I.M., “Volunteers and Professionals, A Team In The Correctional Process,” Federal Probation, no. 3 (September 1971): 46-50.

Stein, P.H., “I’m Only One Person, What Can I Do?,” Federal Probation, no. 2 (June 1970): 7-11.

Stott, O., “Ex-Prisoners Find a Home,” Mental Health (London), 24/5 (1965): 206-208.

Sutherland, E. and D.R. Cressy, Principles Of Criminology, Seventh Edition, Part 1 (1970).

Sykes, G., The Society of Captives. A Study of Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958).

Webster, M.D., The Social Consequences of Conviction (London: Heimemann, 1971): 4-14.

Hebrew publications

The Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority, Survey of the needs of 148 inmates in the Hasharon and Maasiyahoo prisons, April 1986.

Levenstein, A., The ways inmates’ families confront transitional situations — personal and social results, Dr. Philosophy dissertation (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1980).

Marinov, B., Seminar Paper on Rehabilitation and Classification Committees (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1988).

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notes

[1] You can find a detailed description of the Program and a research about it in my article: “The Three-In-One Apartment: Israeli Student-Prisoner Shared Housing Program,” The Correctional Psychologist, Vol. 30, No. 4 (October 1998): 1-9

[2] For descriptions of the different hostels see my article based on my lecture at the Fifth North American Conference on The Family and Corrections (Bethesda, Maryland): Avraham Hoffman, “Israel’s Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority: Programs for the Families,” Family & Corrections Network Report, Issue 19: 12-18.