By Just A Guy
Editors note: This is the second blog post by Just A Guy, our correspondent in the California prison system. His letters from the inside will appear on Mondays and Thursdays, and he welcomes your comments and questions. It’s a little tricky communicating with inmates, since they don’t have acces computers for email, so be patient if it takes us a while to get his responses posted.
Let’s talk about rehabilitation this week.
There is a great misconception that prisoners spend a large part of our time in rehabilitative programs, and that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is putting a massive effort into the rehabilitative process. But the effort isn’t plainly evident to me.
To my knowledge, the only program for drug addicts and alcoholics is called SAP (substance abuse program), but this program is compulsory for those that fit the criteria. The problem with this is that the criteria seem to be a criteria of convenience in order to receive the per inmate funding granted by AB 900.
Some institutions have NA and AA meetings, but the availability of these meetings is dependent on the availability of staff to supervise the the meetings. I find it ironic that you have to sign up for a meeting that is supposed to be anonymous. The truth is that there is very little help offered to those that really want it — and it is forced upon those that don’t want it.