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Will 'SAFE-P' (Substance Abuse
Felony Punishment Facilities) and TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal
Justice) Be Held Accountable?
By Patricia J. Ruland
July 18, 2008
In response to a May 23 Chronicle
report – "Rehabilitation or Torture?" – that recounted inmate
stories of abusive treatment in a substance-abuse program operated
by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a legislative committee
is planning hearings to review the program. According to Larance
Coleman, speaking on behalf of Sen. John Whitmire, Criminal Justice
Committee chair, the CJC will hold hearings on the Substance Abuse
Felony Punishment Facilities (also known as SAFPF or "Safe-P"),
operated by the Chicago-based Gateway Foundation under a contract
worth, according to TDCJ, $38 million over five years. "We will
concentrate on Safe-P programming," Coleman said of the hearings,
tentatively scheduled for September, to evaluate the $234 million
the Legislature appropriated last session for TDCJ rehabilitation
programs. The state proposes to increase SAFPF funding by $63.1
million during 2008-09, although Gateway may not be the only vendor
considered. The exact dates of the hearings will be announced two to
three weeks in advance on www.senate.state.tx.us.
In January, then-inmate Jodi
Stodder-Caldwell persuaded others at the TDJC's Ellen Halbert Unit
in Burnet County to record their SAFPF experiences in letters
submitted to Austin lawyer Derek Howard, who's considering legal
action. According to numerous inmate narratives from Halbert and
other units, the SAFPF program – in theory a substance-abuse
treatment alternative to hard prison time – instead relies heavily
on dubious forms of psychological and physical abuse. Several
inmates describe a group punishment known as "tighthouse," during
which inmates are forced to sit upright in plastic chairs, unmoving
and silent, for as long as 16 hours a day and for weeks to months on
end – a "mind-crushing" form of cruelty that has resulted in mental
breakdowns and suicide attempts. The accounts also report that SAFPF
inmates must routinely attack each other psychologically during an
abusive form of "group therapy," while staff bellow that they are
worthless.
Moreover, inmates charge that their
real medical needs are subject to denial or dismissal; Gateway's
response is that medical care is the responsibility of the TDCJ, not
the contractor. Staff are said to dismiss untreated medical
conditions, some as severe as epilepsy or cancer, with taunts or
advice to "drink more water." [Former] inmate Tracey Atherton, in a
narrative dated May 23, describes the callous manner in which "the
guards talk about inmates who are sick. ... I heard one of the
guards say: 'That fucking bitch is having a seizure.' Everything
that Jodi Stodder stated is true."
There are dissenting voices,
however. Shirley Otto, a SAFPF inmate in 1995 and currently a
Gateway counselor working at the Hackberry Unit in Gatesville, wrote
that after living on the streets, she learned "to live again"
through SAFPF. She described tighthouse as "a timeout for
grown-ups," with breaks for "chow" and therapy, and she accused
complaining inmates of not wanting recovery. "They are looking for
an easier, softer way," Otto wrote. "Somehow, some way, they missed
the blessing of SAFP."
Judging from official responses
thus far, the inmates may indeed find it difficult to convince the
Legislature that the abuses they have chronicled are real. When the
Office of Inspector General sent investigators to Halbert to
interview inmates, Stodder-Caldwell told the Chronicle,
investigators seemed receptive at first but turned increasingly
"rude." Officially, the OIG investigation remains open, but asked in
May about the results of his review, Inspector General John Moriarty
said that the alleged abuses had in fact not occurred. Gateway
President and CEO Michael Darcy called the inmates' descriptions of
tighthouse "bizarre" and untrue, and declined to respond to the
Chronicle story.
According to more recent inmate
accounts, Halbert staff are aware of the public controversy but
unafraid of retribution. "We were told if the lawsuit happens, what
or who would give 'dope fiends like us' help?" wrote Brenda Carroll
on June 5. Carroll says that she'd been forced to wet herself
because an "expeditor" (a ranking inmate in the SAFPF "therapy"
program) had denied her request to go to the restroom. "I was also
forced to sit in the box [a solitary chair] ... for not being aware
of my 'need.'" (I.G. Moriarty expressly rejected allegations that
inmates are deprived of bathroom breaks.)
The SAFPF "therapy" model is based
upon a practice known as "therapeutic communities," which had its
origins in a Sixties-era California drug-abuse program called
Synanon. Critics and proponents alike date the peer-based TC methods
to the "attack therapy" popularized by Charles Dederich in the Santa
Monica-based Synanon, which eventually degenerated into a brutal and
murderous cult, as reported in a 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé
in the Point Reyes Light by then-publisher Dave Mitchell. "It's
unfortunate that Synanon became the model for therapeutic
communities; basically a large portion of drug treatment is based on
a cult," Mitchell said in an interview. Synanon was eventually shut
down by the authorities, in part because in addition to abuse of
patients, staff were assaulting defectors from the program and
threatening detractors with death.
Available for committee testimony
should be survivors of other disgraced programs that operate on the
therapeutic communities model. Some said they would testify just how
closely the SAFPF accounts resonate with their own victimization in
TCs incubated at Synanon. "The women [in SAFPF] have charged they
must often sit silently, rigidly, face-forward, in plastic chairs
for long hours or days, occasionally through periods of weeks on
end. This was true of Straight, Inc. as well," wrote Shelby
Earnshaw, director of a survivor support group, the International
Survivors Action Committee (www.isaccorp.org) in an e-mail. Tony
Connelly, now in his 30s, told the Chronicle that he still hears in
his mind the sound of kids being abused at another Synanon-style TC
facility, Kids Helping Kids, where he was a patient/inmate from the
age of 14 to 16. Connelly says children were required to sit for
hours on donated church pews – sometimes held down by "peers" and
their noses pinched so they couldn't breathe. Connelly recalled,
"The sitting, the rigid posture, the staring at the wall, the
limited showers and restroom breaks are all familiar to me. The
forced confessions, the demeaning attacks ... requiring inmates to
report infractions of other inmates or face punishment are all too
vivid to me." Connelly added that the authorities count on the
public dismissing such complaints because they come from addicts or
former addicts.
"All therapeutic communities have
their origins in Synanon," acknowledged Austin criminologist Martin
La Barbera. But after Synanon's demise, La Barbera says,
professionals revived and refined a good idea – peer therapy – into
modern-day TCs. In the 1990s, Gov. Ann Richards appointed La Barbera
to the committee that would incorporate the TC model into her prison
reform initiatives. This was the "Golden Age," he said, when Texas
set the standard for the nation. "All beds were to be treatment
beds," was Richards' directive, La Barbera says. At the same time,
however, the name "Substance Abuse Felony Punishment" was coined,
possibly to indicate rehabilitation would still involve retributive
justice. "But I do not believe that 'punishment' was ever Gov.
Richards' goal," La Barbera contends.*
When Richards left office, the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice absorbed all rehab duties and
dispensed with La Barbera's services. Still a consultant to prison
systems elsewhere, La Barbera contends that despite its origins, the
TC model has saved lives and spared many people considerable pain
and suffering. "I don't want the baby to be thrown out with the
bathwater," he argues. "TCs are powerful. As with anything that is
powerful, the power can be directed for good or misdirected."
If he were to testify, La Barbera
says he would urge the Legislature to insure that all SAFPFs meet
"fidelity" – a strict set of guidelines insuring TC practitioners
have the "right attitude" above all else. He would also recommend
intensive "immersion" training, in which authorities and staff
experience what inmates will experience. "If you don't meet fidelity
... then it's a crapshoot," La Barbera says.
For her part, Stodder-Caldwell sees
no redeeming qualities to the TC model. "It is a program of
contradictions, where it is almost impossible to do the right thing.
'Attack therapy' is only a form of psychological violence and
abuse," Stodder-Caldwell said. She says she will urge legislators to
divert the millions sent to Gateway – which provides only
"counseling," as the state picks up the tab for housing, food,
clothing, and GED education – to pay for vocational and computer
training instead. "These opportunities are not provided in SAFPF.
Therefore, in reality a person leaves in much the same situation as
they came in – broke and unemployable," Stodder-Caldwell says.
The Legislature is not likely to
hear public testimony from SAFPF staff who fear retribution. In an
e-mail, one respondent to the Chronicle article wrote, "I love my
job there and feel I am one of the few people who work there who
'give the offenders a voice.' ... But if Gateway claims that the
inmates are (and were) in chairs for only four hours a day, that is
a lie. ... What are your plans at this point to hold Gateway
accountable?"
That will be the challenge for the
Criminal Justice Committee.
*[The original version of this
story mistakenly attributed the coining of the name "Substance Abuse
Felony Punishment" to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice when
it was in fact coined during Gov. Richards' administration. The
Chronicle regrets the error.]
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