Rehabilitation vs. security: The need for inmate protection in correctional institutions
✍ Scribed by Frederick C. Thorne; Donald G. Forgays
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1973
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 636 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0090-4392
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
PROBLEM
This paper reports on the ongoing security operations at the Dannemora (N. Y.) State Hospital (DSH) as observed by the staff of an NIMH Hospital Improvement Program (HIP) during the period 1967-1972. The HIP staff was recruited largely from the University of Vermont and worked to improve therapeutic services at the hospital. The DSH operated during this period as a correctional mental hospital receiving all patients from institutions under the N. Y. Department of Correction who became disordered mentally while incarcerated. The DSH was phased out as a correctional mental hospital on October 1, 1972, but the lessons learned there may have application elsewhere.
When the HIP staff began to install new intensive treatment programs for DSH patients in 1967, it became apparent that these patient rehabilitation projects were being impeded by the operations of the DSH Security staff. In microcosm, conditions at DSH appeared to reflect the inconsistencies inherent in the dual missions of all correctional syste-security us. rehabilitation. Correctional mental hospitals tend to be paradoxical in that as hospitals they are supposed to heal patients while as penal institutions they are supposed to provide maximum security for felons considered potentially very dangerous. Therapy and maximum security often are incompatible goals.
Legally a part of the N. Y. Department of Correction, the DSH was operated as a correctional mental hospital, using the regulations of the official correctional rulebook. Nominally, however, the DSH as a mental hospital also was under the supervision of the N. Y. State Department of Mental Hygiene which by statute was authorized to oversee mental health services throughout the state in order to insure that all patients were being treated according to the highest standards.
As observed by the HIP staff between 1967 and 1972, this provision for protective supervision of a correctional mental hospital by the Department of Mental Hygiene did not operate effectively. Faced with dficult and time-consuming coordination problems, the Department of Mental Hygiene a peared to limit its little direct supervision over the clinical operations of DSH. The practical result of this live-and-let-live arrangement between the Department of Correction and the Department of Mental Hygiene was that the patients at DSH were deprived of protective provisions intended by statute.
It early became apparent to the HIP staff that the only source of protection of the civil and psychological rights of DSH patients within the institution could come only from the DSH professional staff. However, in 1967, the medical staf€ was badly demoralized and largely ineffectual as a source of patient protection. ( I ) A study of the power structure of DSH in 1967 revealed three main forces-the Business O5ce of the hospital, the Security Department, and the Medical Staffexerting power in that order. The Business Manager had assumed the duties of the chief operating officer of the institution due to the progressive incapacitation of the Medical Director, but the Security department consistently exerted top influence services to occasional consultations on request of correctional o P cials, and provided