Contact with the Free Community Is Basic If Institutional Programs Are to Succeed 31 Federal Probation 1967

31 Fed. Probation 3 (1967)
Contact with the Free Community Is Basic If Institutional Programs Are to Succeed

handle is hein.journals/fedpro31 and id is 5 raw text is: Contact With the Free Community Is Basic
If Institutional Programs Are To Succeed
BY THOS. R. SARD*
Director, District of Columbia Department of Corrections

RISON DOORS swing both ways. Since most
incarcerated persons will be free to walk
the streets again, the community cannot
afford to look upon prison as an out-of-sight,
out-of-mind junkyard for human failures.
In 1938 the late Donald Clemmer, sociologist
and for 19 years director of the District of Colum-
bia Department of Corrections, coined the word
prisonization. It refers to the assimilation of
prisoners into the folkways, mores, customs, and
general culture of the prison community. In those
days custody and control were the primary goals
of most institutions. Strict regimentation of
eating, sleeping, and working often destroyed
that feeling of individual worth and sense of
responsibility so essential to an eventual adjust-
ment to the outside community.
Twenty-five years later Clemmer introduced
the term correctionalization to depict insti-
tutional programs designed to combat and
counteract prisonization. Correctionalization in-
cludes not only the improvement of an inmate's
personality, character, and work skills, but also
reciprocal relationships and communications be-
tween the institution and members of the free
society. Vocational training in the city, work
release, art class instruction taught at the insti-
tution by volunteers from the community, a fe-
male prisoner sewing a back-to-school dress for
her daughter, a prison choral group singing at
Baltimore in tuxedo dress and evening gowns, a
jazz festival within the institution walls with
nationally famous entertainers, seeing Congress
in session, singing at churches, are examples of
this contact that is so essential for inmates to
have with the outside community.
For want of a better word, we refer to these
outside-the-wall activities and the participation
of community volunteers in activities at the insti-
tution as interchange. Tours, trips, work-release
assignments, attendance at athletic contests-in
On December 31, after 37 years with the District of
Columbia Department of Corrections, Mr. Sard was ap-
pointed to the District's Board of Parole to serve both as a
member and as parole executive.-The Editor.

fact, all activities outside and inside the prison in
which the members of the community and pris-
oners participate together-fall in this category.
Jail inmates once referred to their segregation
from society as doing time in the twilight zone.
In recent years the Department of Corrections
has conducted interchange programs which take
the prisoner to the community and bring the com-
munity into the prison. It is from the outside
world that inmates draw inspiration for growth,
confidence in themselves, and a sense of responsi-
bility for family and friends.
Work-Release Program
Mr. Citizen is not always fully aware of the
forces for the good that he can exert not only on
the inmates, but on the institutional staff as well.
Even by his passive acceptance of halfway houses,
residential treatment facilities, and community
centers he gives persons who are still serving
their sentence an opportunity to attend school, to
take part in work-release employment, and to par-
ticipate in constructive recreation and entertain-
ment. By supporting work-release programs he
provides for the inmates the experience of a
steady job-perhaps the first such experience
they have ever had in their lives-and a chance to
make a new start as law-abiding, self-respecting,
responsible persons.
An understanding community is essential to
the success of our community-inmate programs
in the District of Columbia. Under the authority
of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Act of 1965, which
provides for work release, furloughs, and com-
munity treatment centers, the Department of Cor-
rections launched its first work-release project in
March 1966. The 'Pre-Release Employment Pro-
gram-known as PREP-received help from the
Washington Labor Council in placing 50 Reforma-
tory inmates on jobs in the District of Columbia.
These carefully selected inmates worked for
standard wages during the day, and returned to
*The author expresses his appreciation to Miss Marty Kaplan,
a law student at Harvard Law School, who assisted him with the
preparation of this article.

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