Antisocial Personality Disorders: Prisoner Rehabilitation

Prisoner Rehabilitation

Antisocial personality disorder is considered one of the most difficult of all personality disorders to treat. Individuals rarely seek treatment on their own and may only initiate therapy when mandated by a court. The efficacy of treatment for antisocial personality disorder is largely unknown. Few individuals seek medical attention specifically for antisocial personality disorder, or ASP. Antisocials who seek care do so for other problems such as marital problems, alcohol or drug abuse or suicidal thoughts. Family members or the courts may send some people with ASP to a mental health counselor for evaluation. Antisocial individuals often have poor insight and may reject the diagnosis or deny their symptoms. Incarceration
may be the best way to control the most severe and persistent cases of antisocial personality disorder, and rehabilitation should be attempted for these individuals.
Keeping antisocial offenders behind bars during their most active criminal periods reduces their behaviors' social impact. In rare instances, corrections systems (jails and prisons) provide opportunities for treatment or rehabilitation, but often, these environments, with their abundance of antisocial individuals, only promote antisocial behavior. Corrections officers must balance the goal of punishing offenders with that of preparing inmates for their eventual release into society while maintaining a prison environment free of violence and destructive behavior. While administering sentences corrections officials must strive to meet two major goals: punishment and rehabilitation.
The contradictory nature of punishment and rehabilitation becomes evident when we start to discuss prisoner rights.
Many people hold the point of view that criminals chose to give up their rights and freedoms when they commit a crime. On the other side, prisoner advocates and those interested primarily in rehabilitation feel detainees should be allotted the same rights as ordinary citizens. Examples of these rights include the right to a fair hearing before being punished by prison officials (punitive actions within a jail could include being moved to solitary confinement or transferred to a higher security prison), the right not to endure arbitrary searches or lockdown and the right to fair and respectful treatment by prison staff. This is argued on the basis that prisoners will not learn how to function in society and will have limited success in their treatment programs if they are constantly subject to the frustrating reality of limited personal
rights.
Theoretically, if we were truly interested in the rehabilitation and successful community reintegration of our prisoners, our prisons would be fashioned as treatment facilities where staff trained as counselors and therapists would help prisoners work through areas of addiction and social behaviors. The therapeutic approach would be most successful if carried out in an environment sensitive to the rights and dignity of those undergoing treatment. In addition, according to Thomas Johnson's 2003 study, prison time would be "kept to an absolute minimum to allow a maximum period for contact with and support for the convict while living independently in the community." (1)
`There are several reasons why this is not the approach we as a society take with criminals.
Most importantly, this approach would contain no punishment. As a society we must punish criminals for the harm they have brought to their victims, be it physical, financial, or emotional, and for the fear they instill in the law-abiding population. A civilized society does not tolerate or condone the victimization of others. Punitive sentences demonstrate this. Secondly, there is no evidence to suggest that a corrections system focused entirely on rehabilitation would deliver a high enough success rate to justify its implementation. In addition, many convicts do not want to be rehabilitated, as is evidenced by the many that refuse to participate in prison
programs.
If rehabilitation cannot be properly achieved in a punitive environment, why not just focus on punishment, and leave rehabilitation out of the equation? The answer is because eventually most of our prisoners will be released to live among us. In spite of the fact that we don't want prison to be a soft place, most people hope for the sake of their own safety that during the course of a sentence corrections staff will be able to have some effect in teaching convicts how to live and function in the real world as productive and law abiding citizens. One could argue that there is currently no known cure for antisocial personality disorder, yet how will we ever find an effective treatment for this disorder if we do not strive forward with research? Prisons could be an excellent place to begin.

Works cited:
1) Thomas Johnson, 2003. Antisocial Personality Disorder in Prison Populations.