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The eminent Dr. Hans Toch reflects on a 1975 New York State Department of Corrections staff workshop on the needs of inmates with mental health issues and his assessment of the evolution of intermediate care programming.

The average long-term prisoner's risk of reoffending diminishes with age, in part because some prisoners experience significant maturation and undergo substantial and relevant personality change. This process can be supported by prison staff through the sponsorship of activities and programming designed to promote personal development. Prisoner-release decisions that emphasize offense-related information can take greater account of prisoners' efforts and achievements in confinement.

Prison conditions similar to those of supermax prisons have been instituted on several occasions in the past, in the course of early experiments with prison design. In several instances, supermax-like conditions were abandoned because pre/postintervention data demonstrated that social isolation and enforced inactivity could produce symptoms of mental illness, which could be ameliorated when confinement conditions were relaxed. Such experiences carry implications for current correctional administrators.

The consistent challenge posed by supermax settings is their demonstrably adverse impact on the mental health of difficult, but vulnerable prisoners. These high-tech segregation settings also pose additional problems having to do with regimes that include gratuitous stressors and custodial overkill, and treatment liable to enhance rather than reduce the violence potential of inmates. To survive ongoing and future litigation, supermax confinement settings will have to undertake serious proactive ameliorative reforms.

Politicians are responding to perceptions of a primitive, bloodthirsty electorate by advancing proposals for harsher and more austere prisons. However, studies show the public to be decidedly optimistic about the prospects for change during incarceration, particularly as a result of hard work and self-discipline. In this context, long-term inmates pose the biggest challenge for correctional administrators. A "career-planning" model, centered around notions of advancement, progression, continuity, choice, and achievement, is advocated. Six essential elements of "career planning" for inmates are proposed.

Experiments in prison reform have often included efforts to democratize prisons. Such experiments were especially popular during the progressive era. Today, democratization efforts are congruent with management literature that describes employee participation and total quality of management initiatives through which organizations try to improve the quality of their products and services. Prison democratization can combine opportunities for staff involvement with enhanced prisoner participation. Inmates can be afforded a greater role in classification and programming decisions, and in determining policies that affect the quality of prison life. Such participatory approaches help to normalize prison life and contribute to the resocialization of offenders.

The impact of congested prisons is not primarily a problem of population density, but of corollaries of crowding such as social instability, lack of programming, and the ascendance of custody goals. Congestion affects staff as well as inmates, and different inmates are differently affected. Some have antisocial tendencies exacerbated; others suffer from mental health problems. Staff subserve custody goals, but subserve them less effectively because social control mechanisms—such as programming and classification—are impaired by crowding. A recent prison riot points to transience and idleness as key preconditions and shows the results of congestion in escalating sequences that prominently include crisis management. The most serious consequence of crowding is warehousing, which creates a prison climate that prevents inmates from serving time in customary ways. It remains to be determined whether this result constitutes disproportionate—hence unlawful—punishment.

The impact of congested prisons is not primarily a problem of population density, but of corollaries of crowding such as social instability, lack of programming, & the ascendance of custody goals. Congestion affects staff as well as inmates, & different inmates are affected differently. Some have antisocial tendencies exacerbated; others suffer from mental health problems. Staff subserve custody goals, but less effectively because social control mechanisms -- eg, programming & classification -- are impaired by crowding. A recent prison riot points to transience & idleness as key preconditions & shows the results of congestion in escalating sequences that include crisis management. The most serious consequence of crowding is warehousing, which creates a prison climate that prevents inmates from serving time in customary ways. It remains to be determined whether this result constitutes disproportionate -- hence unlawful -- punishment. HA

AbstractNotorious scientific scandals leave the impression that a line between ethical and unethical research can be drawn, but routine examples show that an ethical penumbra exists. Breaches of ethics in science rarely surface. Most collegial charges of unethical conduct can be dismissed as being partisan; outsiders'ethical questions are more threatening, because they imply that violations are widespread. Such implications can be neutralized by "self‐regulation." Unethical behavior must be purposive. Technical violations can be attributed to ignorance. The downplaying of ethics preserves the "community‐of‐scholars" myth; highlighting the ethics issue would destroy this myth.

Violence against police is a problem that calls for organizational solutions. Among dangers to be avoided are crisis-induced panic and the minimization of the problem, as well as strategic planning by police leadership without rank-and-file participation. Even the most serious violence problems afford opportunities for learning if such problems are addressed by cross sections of a police department's membership. Police unions can be involved as partners in organizational problem solving, as has occurred in industry in Quality of Work Life (QWL) experiments. Joint worker- manager problem solving is independent of labor manage ment negotiations, which can take adversary form. Recent experiences in the Oakland Police Department have shown that even problem officers—officers who contribute to citizen confrontations—can design interventions that reduce violence levels in a community. The Oakland model presupposes that organizational reform activity can simultaneously increase organizational effectiveness and enhance personal problem- solving capacities. As officers help shape a more responsive police agency, they engage in activities—analyzing data and evolving data-based solutions—that refine their skills and build their morale.