Thrapeutic Approach in Correctional Treatment at the Prison—Study on systematization of correctional treatment techniques (3)—

Abstract

The last part of this study deals with the analysis of human relations between counselors and correctional officers created through group counseling program at the Nakano Prison.

(V) Group counseling and custodial officers

Superintendents in ealier days put much emphasis on counseling activities as one of the basic institutional treatment programs. But their successors did not follow the same lines. These change of policy were welcomed by the senior officers who thought much of custody than treatment. Since 1964 custodial officers were ordered to watch the group counseling and to report to the seniors with institution’s officials many counselors stopped their counseling activities or left the institution. This article contains the analysis of these aspects of group counseling program,

1) Structure of counseling group (1965)

Counseling groups which continued for more than one year can be divided into the following three categories: a) group which consists of compulsory……(1), of voluntary participants……(5), of selected participants by custodial officers……(6). Counselor’s leadership in the group naturally decreases in the order of a, b, and c, but the degree of member’s satisfaction does not always accord with that of counselor’s feeling of success.

Topics discussed during the counselingsessions vary according to the groups and members. However, complaints of poor institutional living condition are one of the commonest topics in every groups.

2) Counselor’s attitude

These inmate’s complaints were handled differently according to each counselor’s standpoint. Mr. Morito who used guided group interaction method regarded these complaints as inmate’s resistance related to their other-directed or extra-punitive personality traits and pathology of a prison world, so that he maintained not to compromise.

Mr.Shinoda who introduced analytic psychodrama and psycho-motor therapy also rejected these complaints and tried to establish therapeutic approach only in accordance with each inmate’s personality disoder. And Mr. Makino tried to defend his clinical standpoint by criticizing prison administrators.

On the other hand complaints were accepted as a matter of course by the author and others, and any possible attempts were made to resolve them. Later the author tried to make custodial officers in attendance understand each inmate and gradually have favorable attitude towards counseling. Inmates were stimulated to acquire a more mature technique of interpersonal relations with people different from them.

(VI) Counseling with traffic offenders, conclusion

Most traffic offenders come directly to the prison without being detained in a house of detention or police jail. Group counseling with these traffic offenders gives us valuable information as to the meaning of confinement and institutional treatment.

There are so many problems to be solved in therapeutic approach at the prison. To make therapeutic approach such as counseling or psychotherapy an essential part of institutional programs, each inmate should be diagnosed scientifically, and various treatment techniques should be devised and applied according to this reliable diagnosis. Moreover team system should be developed based on confidence between custodial officers and clinicians.