presented by Avraham Hoffmann at the ICPA 10^th annual conference,  October 2008, Prague

Can we ensure a sustainable rehabilitation for prisoners?

From past times, the wise people of all generations have dealt with the question: How to ensure that a rehabilitated prisoner – who had done positive steps over the bridge that leads toward the normative society – will not revert his ways back to crime, leaving the rehabilitation specialists open-mouthed, disappointed, believing this is a strategic failure as Martinson concluded that “Nothing works”.

            Or, in a more positive formulation: how can we ensure that those we have invested so much effort in their rehabilitation will continue their long rehabilitation way. As said Professor Abraham Twersky, one of the major psychiatrists who dealt with offenders and drug addicts: when can you tell a man has been detoxicated and rehabilitated? When I escort him on his last way.”

            In Genesis, Kane is told “Is it not so that if you improve, it will be forgiven you? If you do not improve, however, at the entrance, sin is lying, and to you is its longing, but you can rule over it.” (4:7)

In other words: the perseverance of the rehabilitatee is the top task of the rehabilitator.

Why does the PRA aim at ensuring perseverance?

This issue has been preoccupying me since I begun to deal with the rehabilitation of prisoner and their families. As I was searching for a method to ensure the rehabilitation’s sustainability, I perceived its importance for:

• the prisoner himself,
• the rehabilitators,        

and

• the sceptical society – so they don’t give up and despair.

And that in a democratic regime, believing in rehabilitation entails providing means, while disbelief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My presentation will discuss the therapeutic aspects of the model, its target population, principles, implementation and structure.

Than, what are the ways to achieve a sustainable rehabilitation?

We all know too well that the amount of time a social worker has for each patient is limited, and therefore they are content with a relatively short term supervised rehabilitation process – one year up to a maximum of two years.

At the PRA we have developed a few programs to increase the chances of achieving a sustainable rehabilitation:

• Employing successfully rehabilitated inmates as guides in our residential hostels for released prisoners.
• Transforming the Hostels as rehabilitation centres, even for the rehabilitatee after he leaves the hostel. He knows it is his second home, where he can come back to, when he feels his weakness and the danger of relapsing.
• We organise gatherings of the hostels’ graduates before every Holliday, where the graduates together with their family members gather. These meetings have great positive and strengthening impact on the rehabilitatees and those presently rehabilitating.
• The Peers group program that I will present today

After clarifying the importance of the rehabilitation sustainability, I will present the methods used by the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority (PRA, Israel) to achieve this target, namely the Peers program:

The peers program was developed by the PRA over 20 years ago. This program trains released prisoners who have successfully sustained rehabilitated for 2 years since their release from prison, to become active partners in the rehabilitation process of newly released prisoners.

What makes a released inmate eligible to become a “peer”?

1. Being drug free for at least 2 years – according to urine tests.
2. Hasn’t been involved in crime for at least 2 years – according to police intelligence reports.
3. Has been persevering at a steady work for at least 2 years.
4. If married – he is conducting healthy and non violent family relations.

The “Peer” must steadily participate in an 80 hours course (during 20 weeks) after his working hours. Following the course, the “peer” is required to accompany released prisoners and integrate them into the “Peers group” during a year following their release from prison. The Peers’ group together with the newly rehabilitatees form a rehabilitation community: strengthening the peer’s rehabilitation and offering the newly released prisoner a role modelling and a meaningful support during his rehabilitation process.

A former offender cannot stay neutral toward crime. He cannot just ignore it, he must take a stand. Therefore, the only way to prevent him from being swept away by crime is by making of him a crime fighter. By helping the rehabilitatee and strengthening his perception of the positive life style.

The program’s theoretical basis

This unique program was developed by the rehabilitation psychologist Anna Kadmon-Telias together with major Israeli academics. The therapeutic model is based upon the existential theory of Frankel, that man searches for meaning through suffering as developed by Professor Shoham in 1980. This is a trial to realise this idea through a peer group where the social worker translates this idea into reality.

The therapeutic method is taken from the Winnicott’s Object relations[1] theory, and focalises on the permanence of the object. According to this therapeutic perception the development of the group is parallel to the development of the baby as the individual, the subject, the baby, grows and develops through his relations with the primary object – the mother, the concept “permanence of the object” relates to the permanent mother that is available to the baby.

 In our program the permanence of object includes 4 elements:

1. Permanence of psychotherapist.
2. Permanence of place.
3. Permanence of time.
4. Common task.

These elements are the basis of the therapeutic work in the peers group, and thanks to them, the individual experiences inclusion, a sense of “togetherness” that enables growth.

1. Permanence of psychotherapist: According to Winnicott “a baby cannot exist without his mother, through there relation he develops the ability to love and give” According to Biran (1983) what is needed from the primary figure is needed from the group therapist: to be the `good enough mother` to enable the not `good enough mothers` from the patient’s past experiences to express in therapy.

The `good enough mother` has the ability to understand the needs, to capture and understand the coded messages and translate them and to provide a holding environment for the client so they have the opportunity to meet neglected ego needs and allow their true self to emerge.

• Permanence of place: a person develops a relation to a permanent work room that symbolises his inner world even when it is composed of only 4 walls that contain his experiences and thoughts. In the groups, the permanent therapy room is a part of the group as individuals are projected onto him in the form of emotions, expectation and disappointments. In comparison in the prison therapy room all the projections belonged to a place outside the walls. The intervals created between the meetings enable the individuals to cope with separation and differentiation.[2]

• Permanence of time: the interval between the meetings obliges the rehabilitatee to stay alone and practice the ability to decide, internalise and apply. The meetings develop the ability to meet and live with the differences. This permanence is needed because of the passage of the patient from the reality behind walls – where most of the projections came from the world outside the walls and with no intervals – these intervals enable the therapeutic process to be examined. The interaction between the intervals and the meetings makes the growth possible.

• Common task: The common task of the peer and his trainee offers them the understanding of their common fate that developed before prison and between its walls, their belonging to other norms and to a world where different principles live and operate, and other codes of language and norms of the offenders sub-culture exist. Tanks to these the peer and his trainee are able to find a real ground to their common positive task – not to return to prison.

The Therapeutic Tools

A therapeutic educational framework: the 6 month training for the peers creates a group consolidation. Through the education the therapy is achieved. The peers learn tools that are therapeutically effective. During the training they learn:

• The Maslow hierarchy of needs model.
• The coping with stigma and belonging to a new social group.
• To differentiate between power and aggressiveness.
• To differentiate between different kinds of communications: aggressive, passive and assertive. Hence they learn to stand for their rights without hurting others rights.
• They acquire tools for problem solving.
• They learn to negotiate.

The principle of pair and cooperation between the peer and his trainee: the common past of both the peer and his trainee, enables the creation of a special bond that the therapist doesn’t have.

“together” – we have a common history.

“apart”  there are limits between us.

The cooperation and sharing helps solve conflicts. The message of the peer to his trainee is a message of hope, growth, like a “generational message”: the peer was in the same place as his trainee and today he is in another place. This relation enables a common language, openness because they have the same “mother tongue”.

The group meetingthay have the same “mother tongue”.

 and peer was in the same place as his trainee and today he is in another place. : the meeting between the peers and their trainees states a brave message: “bent trees do straightened” each trainee is likea tree who suffered a great trauma and after receiving good treatment and rehabilitation he can grow. Although different trees suffer of different trauma, the dilemmas are the same:

• Should I tell where I come from, what in my early development caused low self esteem, with which I have dealt by avoiding dealing with it and through demonstrating aggressiveness.

or

• Should I continue to hide my past.

It seems that all trees that straighten have the same dream, the same challenge to stand straight and upstanding in front of society, and obtain a second chance to prove themselves in front of society’s test.

The program’s elements

The program is composed of 5 components:

1. Professionals – therapists.
2. Peers – released prisoners that successfully rehabilitated.
3.  Trainee – released prisoners at the beginning of their rehabilitation process.
4. Pairs – a peer and a trainee.
5. Group – a therapeutic setting where the professional, the peers and the trainees participate.

First stage: the professional locates, chooses and trains the peers. Hence an educational therapeutic group is created.

Second stage: after the integration and training of the peers, the trainees are chosen according to professional criteria and pairs are formed. The peer-trainee meet once a week.

Third stage: the core group of the professional and the peers is expanded to include the trainees that join them, and hence is created the Group: the goal of the peers program. This group setting moderates the problem of released prisoners: the lonely man.

As the rehabilitatee becomes active in integrating a newly released prisoner, his own rehabilitation motivation to persevere is strengthened.

Conclusion

This program contributes to the rehabilitation theory a method that has succeeded in securing the rehabilitation’s sustainability and the prisoner’s perseverance as a positive citizen choosing the right path of life.

The contribution of this program that has been operating in Israel for over two decades, to the rehabilitation theory, lies in the fact it has succeeded in ensuring the preservation of rehabilitation and the released prisoner’s perseverance as a positive citizen in his community, and eventually his choice to proceed with this positive path while at his eternal crossroad between the return to crime or the perseverance on his rehabilitation road.

Every program needs preservation because it should be connected to the reality of life. In real life each one has his own obligations, and there is a danger that a participant will disconnect from the network that supports him. Therefore, we sought the creation of a community of rehabilitatee in which the members help and support each other with the accompaniment of a professional, so that just as one starts stumbling – before he commits crime – he can find remedy.

In Deuteronomy (22:8) it says: “When you build a new house, you shall make a guard rail for your roof…” these people need a guard rail, some throughout their lives. But a pleasant guard rail such as friends offers a community where he doesn’t have to pretend = a rehabilitative community that is both a purpose and a means of perseverance.

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[1]  Winnicott 1958, 1965; Segal 1973; Farbain 1952; Kerenberg 1975.

[2]  Mahler, cited in Biran 1983.