From
the LSI newsletter HEALTHY SOLUTIONS, Volume 1, Number 1
Based on a successful Life Sciences treatment program, in July a group of prisoners with addiction problems began an innovative treatment program in a special prison in central Kansas. This program offers new hope for reducing returns to prison in the future. The Ellsworth Correctional Facility (ECF) is dedicated to providing a 90-day "tune-up" to parole violators before they return to the streets again. A new type of prisoner was created last year by changes in state sentencing laws designed to prevent prisons from over-flowing. Under revised sentencing guidelines, persons who have parole revoked on a technical violation can be incarcerated no more than 90 days, regardless of how they behave in prison, unless their behavior constitutes another crime. There are now about 6000 people on parole in Kansas. Last year about 2500 of them had their paroles revoked. In February, the 600-bed Ellsworth Facility became the State's first prison to house strictly parole violators. It is one of only four such facilities in the country. Since most prisoners now are incarcerated and violate parole in relation to substance abuse charges, an effective treatment for addiction could save the State of Kansas millions of dollars including costs for incarceration (currently set around $25,000 per year for each prisoner), costs of repeated treatment following relapse, and costs of addiction-related crime. The Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health in Topeka obtained a 3-year grant to supply all addiction treatment in ECF beginning July, 1993. Each year 70 prisoners will take part in an innovative neurofeedback therapy program that is resulting in extremely low relapse rates in individuals with substance abuse problems. Several small controlled studies in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Fort Lyons, Colorado and at The Menninger Clinic have demonstrated the value of neurofeedback therapy for addictions. Another 140 inmates each year will receive standard substance abuse treatment. Data comparing these two treatments will represent the largest controlled study of the effect of neurofeed- back therapy with addiction, and the first with a prison population. A group of 109 inmates has completed treatment, and while it is too early to determine what the results will be, it is clear that the treatment staff, the prison staff, and the patients themselves are feeling positive about the experience. "Few people today seem to understand how to correct the addictive problem that underlies our confining large groups of people in prisons. Unfortunately prisoners are often trained in how to engage in further criminal behavior. "We are lucky to have a State government with the foresight to try something new, a prison with a Warden (Louis Bruce) and a staff dedicated to attempting to rehabilitate, not just to punish. Neurofeedback therapy can contribute savings not just in dollars but also in human lives."
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