the effect of counseling on adjustment in prison

The Effect of Counseling on Adjustment in PrisonAuthor(s): Vernon FoxSource: Social Forces, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1954), pp. 285-289Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573248 .

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EFFECT OF COUNSELING ON ADJUSTMENT IN PRISON 285

Great variations in interest profiles were found among students both between and within the engineering, agriculture, business, science, and liberal arts academic fields. The highest mean interest percentile scores found were 80 for the

scientific interest for science students, 79 for the persuasive interest for business students, 76 for the persuasive interest for liberal arts students, and 71 for the mechanical interest for engineering students.

THE EFFECT OF COUNSELING ON ADJUSTMENT IN PRISON*

VERNON FOX

Florida State University

HE integration of the professional services T into the total prison program is a major

problem facing modern penologists. There has been wide disagreement about whether and how assistance from sociology, social work, psychiatry, and psychology can be used advantageously in prisons. Most prisons have accepted assistance from the behavior sciences and arts through the classification committee and the diagnostic depot. These programs gather information about each new prisoner as he arrives, for purposes of diag- nosis, research, or compliance with the law. Recom- mendations are made as to what program he should be given in order that he may in the future select more socially acceptable solutions to his personal problems.

The integration of the professional services with the routine aspects of prisons is not ac- complished by classification committees nor by diagnostic centers. Neither the classification committee nor the diagnostic center is able to account for the practical interpersonal relationships in the prisoners' contacts with custodial officers, mail office censors, work supervisors, and other inmates, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In the practical situation, professional recommendations from any source are seldom remembered long. The important factors in prisoner placement are often what assignments are filled and what assignments need men.

Traditional classification existed at the State Prison of Southern Michigan prior to 1949. Twelve sociologists and psychologists had prepared social

histories and psychological reports on all new prisoners as they arrived. Rough diagnoses were made, cases were presented to the classification committee, and recommendations for institutional, work or school, and custodial placement were made at the end of the inmates' first month at the prison. The recommendations were forwarded to the deputy warden in charge of custody, who made the assignments as he deemed advisable. The recommendation of the classification committee was merely a recommendation. With the exception of one sociologist who specialized in writing pre- parole progress reports for the parole board three months before the expiration date of each man's sentence, no further formal contact with sociologists or psychologists was provided the inmates. Consequently, the professional services were out of contact with the total prison program except for this highly specialized service.

In order to correct this deficiency, the State Prison of Southern Michigan in 1949 re-aligned the professional personnel and their work in order to better integrate the professional services into the practicalities of everyday living at the prison. Ten psychologists and sociologists were assigned to the 4,600 men living inside the walls and two were assigned to the 1,200 men living outside the walls. Their title was changed to "counselor," in order to avoid the old prisoners' antipathy toward such titles as "sociologist" or "psychologist." For want of a better system, case loads were assigned to each counselor according to the terminal digits in the prisoners' serial numbers. When prisoners arrived and were assigned numbers by the record office, the counselors were notified,

* Read before the sixteenth annual meeting of the

Southern Sociological Society, Chattanooga, Tennessee, March 27, 1953.



286 SOCIAL FORCES

and each prisoner was given the name of his counselor.

The usual information was obtained from the prisoners' relatives, previous employers, schools, and other social agencies. The results of tests for intelligence, achievement, aptitudes, and medical examination were made available. The counselor had also the probation officer's report from the court of sentence when he interviewed any prisoner to prepare the admission summary. This summary outlined the man's major problem and the steps that could be taken within institutional limits to correct it. The counselor then presented his man to the classification committee, recommending a program supported with reasons. The classification committee usually ordered that program to be put in effect, for in Michigan's counselor program the classification committee report had become an order.

Throughout the inmate's incarceration, the counselor interviewed him at regular intervals to help him meet his problems in the prison and to plan for the future. All problems other than custodial discipline were referred to counselors. As sentences expired, the counselor prepared the pre-parole progress report for each of the men in his case load, outlining the major problems, attempted treatment, progress or lack of progress, with his recommendations for or against parole.

When the counselor system went into effect, many unsympathetic custodial officers refused to answer inmates' questions, but said, "Go see your counselor." For months, the custodial personnel and others unsympathetic to professional service ridiculed it, and "Go see your counselor" echoed through the halls. Many custodial officers assigned counselors to each other on the basis of the terminal digits in their time clock numbers. Facetious as it was, this process helped to spread the idea of counseling so that when the initial malicious in- tent had been spent, more personnel seriously evaluated it than would have known about it otherwise.

There was a closer interpersonal relationship between the prisoners and professional personnel than had previously existed. For some prisoners the relationship was forced, because the counselor had become the focal point for functions previously handled by others. For other men, the counselor was a welcome contact with a trained man interested in prisoners' problems. For inmates and personnel alike, the re-alignment of professional

personnel from specialized and compartmentalized functions to a generalized integration with the rest of the prison had a telling effect. Assisting each inmate to adjust to living within the institution brought the counselor into contact with work supervisors, custodial personnel, and other people he had never known before. This re-alignment of sociologists and psychologists had resulted in integration of professional services with the prison program.

The purpose of the study outlined in this paper was to determine to some extent the effect of the use of professional personnel in a counseling program, compared with the use of professional personnel in the traditional classification system. A follow-up study on the basis of success and failure on parole could not be done because not enough time had elapsed to measure such success and failure. The purpose of this study could best be achieved in the practical prison situation by determining the effect of the counseling program on the population which was affected immediately by it compared with the effect of the traditional classification system on a similar population. The tentative hypothesis was that the use of professional personnel in the counseling program, in which cases are followed from arrival in prison to parole, results in better adjustment than does the use of professional personnel in the traditional classification system.

PROCEDURE

To many who observed the counselor program go into effect, there appeared to be a division between the inmates who did not want to accept the counselor program and those who accepted it readily. This division seemed to be based on two factors. The first and most obvious immediate factor was the date of arrival in prison. The group of inmates who had been in the prison a long time and had become accustomed to taking their problems to a captain, deputy warden, or other higher prison official tended to resent being shunted to trained sociologists or psychologists whom they considered to be "youngsters" partially because of their youth and partially because they had been hired a long time after the inmate had begun his sentence. The group of inmates who accepted well the counselor program were those who had arrived for the first time after the counselor system had been initiated. The second factor contributing to the division of acceptance was the




differential personality needs in the older inmate group for ego support and reassurance. The difference in attitudes of those who arrived in prison before the counseling program was established and those who arrived afterward was of greater sig- nificance than the differential in personality needs. Within any prison system the differences in personality needs will appear and be at least partially satisfied by sympathetic personnel who may be in proximity to the inmate.

The procedure was to compare objectively the adjustment in prison of two groups of inmates with as nearly similar backgrounds as possible, unaffected by previous prison experience, serving their prison terms as close together in time as possible, with one group experiencing the traditional classification system and the other experiencing the counseling program.

The counseling program went into effect on May 1, 1949. The serial numbers of men without previous prison experience who arrived between fifteen months and six months prior to that date were tabulated for the control group, since they served under the traditional classification system. The control group, then, included first-offenders who arrived at the prison between February 1, 1948, and November 1, 1948. Their adjustment in prison was measured until May 1, 1949. The experimental group, or those who had served under the counseling system, was made up of men who had arrived in prison for the first time during the nine months following May 1, 1949. Their adjustment was measured until August 1950. This gave constant time of measurement between the groups temporally as close together as possible.

The cases in each group were individually matched for (1) major type of offense, (2) age, (3) intelligence quotient within five points, (4) length of sentence, (5) marital status, and (6) residential background according to the size of the community. 87 cases out of 400 could be matched on all of these factors.

The device selected for measuring adjustment in prison was developed by the writer on the basis of 100 cases in a previous study.' The scale was built on the basis of routinely collected reports and records which were tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis to determine the diagnostic

TABLE 1. WEIGHTED SCALE OF PRISONER

ADJUSTMENT SCORES ON 11 ITEMS

ITEMKS DIAGNOSTIC ITEMS ~~~~WEIGHTS

Work reports: Good ........ 24.3 Average ............................. 16.2 Poor ............................... 8.1

Misconduct: No misconduct reports ................. 13.5 Minor reports ........................ 9.0 Major reports .............. .......... 4.5

Block officer's reports: Good adjustment .......... ........... 13.5 Average adjustment ................... 9.0 Poor adjustment ............ .......... 4.5

Visits from outside: 10 or more per year ......... .......... 13.2 1 to9 ............................... 8.8 No visits ............................. 4.4

School reports (pro-rated if no school): Good ............................... 12.9 Average ............................. 8.6 Poor ................................ 4.3

Type of misconduct: No misconduct reports ................. 11.4 Rebellion against authority ....... ...... 7.6 Violence against persons ....... ........ 3.8

Correspondence: 70 or more letters in or out ............. 10.8 40 to 69 letters ............ ........... 7.2 less than 39 letters ......... ........... 3.6

Chaplain's appraisal: Good religious status .................. 9.9 Fair religious status ................... 6.6 Poor religious status ....... ........... 3.3

Financial budgeting: Saved $12.00 or more .................. 8.7 Saved $5.00 to $11.99 ................. 5.8 Saved less than $5.00 ......... ......... 2.9

Work stability: 6 months or more on one job ...... ..... 8.4 6 months or more on two jobs ..... ..... 5.6 6 months or more on more than two jobs,

or less than 6 mos ................... 2.8 School stability:

6 months or more ..................... 7.2 Less than 6 months, or part-time student.. 4.8 No school contact ..................... 2.4

weights of each item. Good, average, and poor adjustment was weighted by multiplying the diagnostic weights of the item according to the criterion of internal consistency by 3, 2, and 1, respectively. Reliability and validity of the instru-

I Vernon Fox, The Effect of Juvenile Institutionaliza- tion on Adjustment in Prison (M.A. Thesis, Michigan State College, 1943), chap. 6.



288 SOCIAL FORCES

ment were checked by a correlation test with estimation of prisoner adjustment by a sociologist in 27 cases. The final scale with the items arranged in the order of decreasing importance is shown in Table 1. The adjustment scores on the original sample ranged from 60.1 to 117.4, with a mean at 89.9.

In order to obtain their adjustment scores, this adjustment scale was applied to the records of the 87 men in the control group, or those who had served under the traditional classification system. The scale was then applied to the records of the 87 men in the experimental group, or those who had served under the counseling system. Means and standard deviations were computed on both arrays of adjustment scores. Comparison was made between the adjustment scores of the two groups by the critical ratio technique.

RESULTS

The results of the comparison of the adjustment scores between the control and experinmental groups are shown in Table 2.

The mean adjustment score for the control (classification) group was 93.4, while the mean adjustment score for the experimental (counselor) group was 97.6. The critical ratio between the two distributions was 2.5, which exceeds the 5 percent

TABLE 2. COMPARISON OF ADJUSTMENT SCORES OF MEN SERVING UNDER TRADITIONAL CLASSIFICATION

SYSTEM AND MEN SERVING UNDER COUNSELOR

SYSTEM

ADJUSMENT CORM CLASSIFICATION COUNSELOR ADJUSTMENT SCORE: GROUP GROUP

Total 87 87

125-9 0 1 120-4 1 4 115-9 3 0 110-4 6 1 105-9 5 10 100-4 10 20 95-9 15 19 90-4 18 18 85-9 15 6 80-4 7 4 75-9 4 4 70-4 1 0 65-9 0 0 60-4 1 0 55-9 1 0

level of confidence. The tabulation and computa- tion of the data indicate that a significant difference in adjustment scores exists between the two groups of prison inmates. This difference shows that in this sample the inmates who served under the counseling program adjusted to the prison situation better than the inmates who were processed through and served under the traditional classification system.

Discussion with the psychologists, sociologists, and social workers who functioned as counselors revealed several practical ways in which the counseling program assisted each man better to adjust to prison routines. Many of the frustra- tions that present themselves to inmates result from lack of information. Counselors have re- ported that much of the service rendered some of the inmates is in the re-interpreting for them of a frustrating situation. Some of them, for instance, have suspected that their wives or sweethearts had been unfaithful to them. Many of these fears and suspicions had been allayed by discussing the reasons for these suspicions with a counselor who could in many cases re-interpret the evidence for the inmate in a less damaging and more just manner. In some cases, when it appeared that the suspicions may be well-founded, the counselor has helped the inmate discuss reasons for it, and what the inmate might have been doing if the situation were reversed. Many such situations have been re-interpreted by inmate and counselor so that either the inmate has considered his suspicions unfounded or could accept their existence without trauma.

The counselor has been called upon to absorb aggression or redirect it in many cases. Frequently the inmate has become enraged at his work supervisor and has come to the counselor for a change of job. The counselor has handled these matters in various ways. Sometimes he just sits and lets the inmate verbalize his aggressions. The counselor has generally been able to reduce the intensity of the aggression in these situations, though it has become sometimes advisable to change the inmate's assignment.

A major contribution that the counselor has been able to make is the creation of an atmosphere that is oriented in the direction of treatment and self-improvement. Knowing that each man he interviews will be his responsibility, the counselor will attempt to orient the man toward self-improvement during the first interview, outline a plan of




treatment with the man, and carry it out. The inmate is thereby provided a goal to strive toward, rather than being left to drift into the best ways of getting along in prison. Serving time becomes purposeful.

Most important among these emotionally im- mature men has been that the counselor provides a source of emotional response. During the therapeutic interview, a transference and countertransference can be built. The relationship in the counselor program can continue long enough to show constructive results. Even before constructive results begin to show, counselors report that many men have said that this was the first time they had found anyone who has been sufficiently interested in them to listen through their stories.

CONCLUSIONS

The counselor system re-aligned p rofessional personnel so that each inmate had closer contact with a treatment-oriented man trained in sociology, social work, or psychology. For any problem of importance to an inmate, the counselor functioned in some manner. Consequently, case work or counseling services became integrated into the prison program.

The counselors' services to the prison inmates seem to be in (1) re-interpreting frustrating situations, (2) absorbing aggression to extinguish, weaken, or redirect it, (3) giving purpose to prison life by creating a treatment atmosphere and attitude, and (4) providing an emotional object

to which the inmate can relate in transference and countertransference in a therapeutic situation.

The counselors' case loads in this study averaged 459 men inside the walls and 600 men outside the walls. This is an absurdly high case load. It is impossible for one man to do any sort of therapy worthy of the name with more than 60 men. In addition, many of the custodial and other personnel openly ridiculed the program. Even with these handicaps, however, integration of professional services through the counseling system showed results significantly improved over the traditional classification system, with the same personnel involved and with the cases in the sample individually matched on background social factors.

The primary conclusion of this study from the administrative standpoint is that if rehabilitation of personalities is to be successfully achieved, the institutional facilities must be organized around the needs of these personalities rather than for the convenience of the institution. While a high degree of specialization gets a specific task done faster, the generalized integration of services is more effective in influencing the adjustment of the personalities within the institution. 'When at- tempting to help personalities, the program should be organized in such a way that an inmate may have the same therapist over a long term, preferably his entire treatment period. Further, the therapist should have functions that will insure his integration into the daily routines of the prison.

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the effect of counseling on adjustment in prison

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