I am in prison and just need a little help to escape. Please hear me out...

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin


Now listen here no 6, this is not a prison or how often have you to be told.

Now sit down, shut up, and finish your spam.

Heres what we have to do, first break into smaller groups and communities of prisoners, say 5-50,000 max. And live out in the jungles and islands and lakes mountains. Get out of the cities, all of us.

Then accept all prisoners as individuals, no repeats or clones.

Make a life of luxury for all with only the latest of technology and connect at regular intervals with other communities to trade and share, visit and party together.

When one community reaches 50,000 then create a new community and continue.

There will be no need for guards as there will be no wars.

There will be no need for the criminals.

why would anyone need to 'read between the lines' when it is spelled out for them?

how many 'prisoners' are 'illiterate'?





(wasn't it john dillinger that claimed to have simply walked right through the walls?) -wink

could be a fine movie...lol

Sorry Dude,
But your stick in there buddy.
You did the crime you do the time

Nice food for thought.

A bit too "brave new World" Aldous Huxley anyone? The fact that the basic idea is plagiarized doesnt mean it has lost any of its poignancy though...

We are all willing prisoners, telling everybody we want out, fooling ourselves we really want out but the old, habitual, trusted world(i.e. prison) keeps calling us back with a soothing alluring voice. The door we see in the wall leads to an unknown, scary reality. We are too fat, too comfortable, too compliant. This "we" includes me...

It`s the conundrum that still keeps Philosophers pretty busy. (And psychiatrists and researchers keep busy with the physical "why". Are we just apes, hunkering for a safe place up in a tree??)

The main thing to remember is that you chose to break into the prison, thinking this time I will over come regardless. Pretty risky business but you felt you could do it.

Like in the matrix, the phone you use to get out is meditation, going inside and quieting the mind, which is the only place where there are bars confining you.

OP, is this your poem?

How to Break Out of Prison

"All prisons are mental prisons.
They lock from the inside.
You lock yourself in,
and you own the key,
so only you can let yourself out."
—John Wareham

www.wareham.org...


Someone has a new book out:

The President's (BUSH) therapist - Mark Alter - gone missing?

reply to post by Tentickles


You obviously didn't get that members point of view
or you are one of them.
Hopefully not, hopefully your just a little sour right now and need some real world sugar and lovin'...chau

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin


Metaphorically speaking, WELL DONE!!
It sounds like life in our world which brings to mind a great saying. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free". Also sounds like the matrix.

Assuming this is not just metaphorical what are your charges and what is the name of the prison you are located in? Where is this prison located or where were the original charges filed?
The only one you will ever be able to save is yourself as others are happy being sheep. Well they think they are happy.


Metaphorically the only way out of this prison is death and why run and cower by killing our self? Stick it out and fight it to the end. Never back down and never give in for someday we will find what we seek.

I can't help but think this is another thread without an ending like most others if you really are in prison. We shall see.


[edit on 22-1-2009 by N3krostatic]

OP, if you want to be free it is possible. However, freedom comes with a price, are you willing to pay the price? Sadly I doubt it as few ever will. Those that do not know what the cost is have never paid it and truly are not interested in or even finding out.

I am I being metaphorical, not at all and the OP is not in a prison as some deemed him to be. Matrix, no, mental facility, no so called prison planet, yes. No need to leave the planet or present location to gain freedom. Just a suggestion, check on what it means to truly be a sovereign citizen. Then if your willing go and pay the price. Otherwise go take your meds and remain a prisoner and be happy.

Absolutely brilliant.

If you are of those that is under the control then this person speaks gibberish or tells a story. If of those who are not, you understand because your peers are also under a similar control.

Perhaps i am missing the point but I don't think so. Only the op can say what he is alluding to.

Op, If we are on the same page then i wholeheartedly feel you and can only say that until the mind control devices are destroyed than there is no escape. Your peers are filled with glitz, glamor and hope. If they could see through the shroud like you can, then hopefully, they would help you.

You may want to ask yourself, perhaps they are not under full control but maybe enjoy the blissful ignorant existence they live so they fight to conceal the reality that they have grown to despise.

I find myself wishing i was brainwashed to believe that my prison is perfect, but know that i could never accept a fallacy as truth or the only way to exist.

The following reply is from the original poster, addressed to all who seek a reply from me.

Allow me first to apologize to everyone who felt personally insulted by the original post. Others here seem to realize and accept that I had another intention in mind. Let me ask this question of all those who say they do not understand or just did not appreciate my use of provocative-metaphor for this purpose:

If you believe that I believe myself to be some kind of prisoner, why would I want to incite my fellow inmates into a riot against me? Unless, of course you think I have a death wish.

And apparently I am lucky this is an online forum and not a real prison that I share with some of you. Otherwise, it appears I would already have been murdered in the prison yard a few times over by now at the hands of those who seem to think that I am just trying to spoil their picnic.

But I also see replies here from people who sound like they would make very worthy accomplices in a Great Escape, like the one I have in mind. Thanks to those people who dared to support me by stepping into this beehive that I seem to have stirred-up into such an frenzy. Apparently, I am not nearly as alone as I imagined myself to be. While hearing from people who actually agree with me is a relief (much like finding someone who can speak English in a country where only a foreign language is spoken), I hope you will understand this reply will be mostly directed toward those who believe we live in a free-enough world already.

Nevertheless, I hope that everyone will feel directly replied to by me in some way if I now tell you a story that is literally true, which (unfortunately) begins with a famous fable filled with nothing but metaphors. (And it's not the bible)

I believe there is a mystery contained within this fable. One that might even answer how some of our biggest problems (here in the pen) began. As for the resolution of this mystery, I will offer only a theory that makes sense to me. If you want to crucify me for advancing a theory, controversial though it may be, I believe you will only prove that none of us are really free to think for ourselves, much less ask questions about what we are supposed to believe (here in the big-house).

And since I am only planning to advance one theory here, I now invite everyone else to advance their own theories... that is, if you have one that you think fits better than mine. Also, go ahead if you want to argue that the mystery I see in this fable exists only in my imagination, right alongside the prison many of you say is also only imaginary.

Sound fair? Or would most of you still prefer to kill me than read another word? If so, why then read another word?

Please allow me to begin with the fable from within the real story I have to tell, which is a famous fable that we all know. At least, we think we know. I used to think I knew, until the day came that will lead us into the real (metaphor-free part) of the story ahead.

The name of this fable is the same as the user-name I chose to create a membership here. Has anyone noticed that my name here is Rumpelstiltskin?

The real story I have to tell began not long ago, when one day I decided to make a birthday card for my Mother using a Rumpelstiltskin theme. But I could not remember exactly how the story went, so, naturally, I wanted to make sure there were no negative connotations that would be unsuitable for a mother's birthday card.

I looked for a summary of the fable on the Net, which is when I first heard about a supposed hidden anti-Semitic message in the fable. Of course, I recoiled in disgust at the idea that some people believe the fable is suggesting that Jewish people are gold-lovers who steal babies to kill and then eat. Of course, I was ready to drop my idea of using such a theme for a birthday card right there, and certainly would have done so had I not caught a glimpse of another possible moral to the story. It made much better sense to me and hinted at something bigger, which then made me wonder if I was just supposed to look for an unspeakable anti-Semitic message so that I would not look for any other possible message.

All of this naturally made me very curious about the authors of Rumpelstiltskin, the Brothers Grimm.

Got a bit of a chill down my spine when I read that the Grimm Bros lived during a period of history that was already of interest to me because of something else that happened back then. Grimm Bros were alive during the same time that the international banking system was born... same banking system, incidentally, we all use today. But not only very same historical period were the Bros born, also very near the same location in old Europe that our international banking system is said to have been started.

A shame how it seems economic hardship befell the poor Grimm-Bro family while the brothers were still children. The reasons are not clear, but the loss of a job is mentioned and the death of papa-Grimm in connection with the family's apparent cash-flow problems. But that's all I could find out from that source.

So I headed back to Rumpelstiltskin, where I found more clues...

There was an original version of the fable and later versions. The original version is shrouded in a few of mysteries of its own, such as very few references made to the possibility that the very name, Rumpelstiltskin, could have been derived from the name of an old game that German children used to play. Still more interesting is that it seems there may have been an older version of the game, which was somehow 'played differently', and which may have been of Jewish-German origin, or of some other origin.

Of course, now I would like very much to know how the original game was played, what it was played with, and what the rules were. But instead of finding out anything further, I reach another dead end.

So all I really have so far are three interesting questions about a fable, each which is shrouded in mysteries of its own.

Let's press on anyway...

I don't call myself a Christian these days, but shall we check in with the bible? Doesn't the good-book say that charging interest on loans is actually a sin, called usury?

Hmm... then could the gold that Rumpelstiltskin seems to magically spin from straw possibly be a metaphor for the gold that international bankers seem to magically spin from paper bank notes? Do you suppose this could be a reference to the way these bankers started to operate back then what we still call 'our' (as if it belongs to us) “fractional reserve banking” system?

My theory is that the Grimm Bros may have had something to tell us that they did not feel safe to say to openly back then. If I'm right, I can't say I blame them for being afraid because I'm not sure if it's even safe to say what the name of the real problem may be NOW.

I believe the fable of Rumpelstiltskin may very well have been written to conceal a message for us about this shiny-new banking system the Grimm Brother's saw expanding so quickly around the world. Gee, I wonder if those neighborly Grimm Brothers may have even seen a few Great Depressions coming in our future? I wonder if they tried their best to warn us that we might never overcome our problems unless we know the name of those problems. Just like the problem of Rumpelstiltskin wouldn't go away in the fable until someone overheard the name, Rumpelstiltskin.

If so, do you suppose that this crafty little message-in-a-bottle the Grimms so kindly furnished us with was written as a children's story in the hope that even those who want to kill me here for bringing any of this up would even understand the real message?

Alright, I know this is anonymous, but I forgot my ATS account info (oh well, probably better that way). This intrigues me. There is no need to speak too openly about such things, but I will relate what I can gather from the original post. You are in prison, you want to escape, you need the help of other prisoners. Since you have not told me the name of the prison, I can only assume the worst. Your post here may not be enough to help you escape, but it's a starting place for an idea and that's what matters. I think the problem is that when someone is brainwashed it is hard to wake up to reality, and many times it is easier to ignore it and choose the fantasy. I may not be able to directly help you, but I am certain that your words in this post are residing with other prisoners. I'm not sure how I feel about your escape plans, whatever they may be, but instead I would like to tell you a story in hopes that you will understand it.

Once upon a time, there was a man similar to yourself. He was imprisoned secretly against his will, but he was taught to believe that life in prison was the only way to live. For years he suffered and struggled under unpleasant conditions, but he ignored the walls around him because he did not realize that there was anything to escape to. Eventually he stopped caring as much about the conditions and he finally got to a point where he couldn't even see the walls. He was perfectly content, but little did he know that the more comfortable he became with his prison, the thicker his chains became.

Recently I heard from this man. Somehow despite all the security measures laid out to keep him in prison away from reality, he managed to get a message through to me. the message said, "I know I am trapped, and there is little chance of escape. At this point I do not know if there is hope for me. A part of me wants so badly to get out, but it dwindles every day. I recently forgot I was in prison, but a failed brainwashing technique brought me back to the reality of my situation. Now I am pondering whether it is so bad, living in prison. If all I am looking for is happiness, then all I have to do is embrace the life which I currently lead. It may not be freedom, but if it makes me happy, then I am not so sure that freedom is for me."

I can help get you the keys to your prison, but I'm not sure if I want to help you escape. There was a time when I would gladly lend a hand, but I'm not so sure that escape is the best option anymore. If you can convince me to help, I most certainly will, and I will try not to get in the way of your escape plans, but as they say, if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem.

seriously? He is talking about the USA. Not real prison. Methinks that most of you didn't read his whole post. METAPHOR!!

Originally posted by ANNED
You don't want to escape life in prison is better right now then you would have on the outside.

If you have not read a news paper lately the US is going to h**L more people are losing there jobs every day.

People are losing there homes to the banks because they can not make there payments.

You have it good in prison you get three meal a day and have a roof over your head.

Stay there for at least 5 more years till things are back to normal.

For those who don't seem to get it, and not surprising since they are probably the same morons that got us into this mess, the OP has posted an analogy for the World conditions that Americans now face. We are all imprisoned in a psychologically engineered prison geared social system, the only way out is to shatter the mental restraints enforced upon us in the form of Public Acts of Law and the very real events they inspire.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
The prison, like the idea of escape, is also in your head.
Change your way of thinking and you will change your terms of imprisonment.
You are free.

Not true.
The prison is not in one's head, it is in their very Police State of Laws.

I watched an episode of COPS tonight where they pulled a man out of his car and arrested him, who cares why, it has no overall bearing here, the man was arrested in front of his small children who could not yet talk. The police woman says it's a tragedy and very real fact that the children have no idea why they are pulling daddy out of his car and arresting him. They only see police pulling their dad from the car and taking him away, they don't know why. Now she should have shut up here and let it sink in what she had just said. That children who can't speak see the World for what it is. A place where daddy is good-- Police bad. But no, she kept on rambling. She went on to say that they didn't understand it was to protect the children, for the children's own good.

Now, Police, not Daddy, know what is in Daddy's kid's best interest.

This is no metaphor, this is the World folks like ya'll have allowed. Thank God, I'm in the minority on this. It means I have the common sense here, since, common sense isn't really that common. That and I vote down these Laws and detest them at every chance I get. So, I know we don't have them from my doing. I don't even acknowledge half the Laws we have or the Authority of the Authorities to impose them on me.

So, I may get locked up-- I'll just try to escape, prison's aren't solid construction's they are pieces put together, and besides, humans are a walking chemistry set.

Why aren't humans forbidden on planes? A great chemist, could easily obtain the chemicals they need from people alone. I mean what if a suicidal terrorist just swallowed the chemicals needed, or a group of them swallowed various chemicals, so their cohorts could slice it out of them and mix them en flight. Safety and Security please. Any redneck who field dresses a deer knows what the 14 regeant acids of the human stomach alone could do if poured over skin, bone, or metal. It's only the stomach lining that keeps it in check.

Are people really so naive?

To escape the prison, you'd have to subdue the idiots who don't believe there is one, or, who think it's okay to have, then those who prosper from it-- being less in number would crawl back under those rocks from which they came, because, shadow retreats from the light.

[edit on 23-1-2009 by PhyberDragon]

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth
intruiging. So what you are saying is that our government has in a sense brainwashed us and we dont even know it.

You are saying that they control us and we dont even know. You are saying that the majority are all mindless sheep and just do as their told

You are saying that you know of a way to get us all un-brainwashed. You are saying you know of a way to fill the majority of us in on the truth.

you have a plan to free us from this metaphorical prison.

Thats pretty deep, and I like how you made us all think. Unless you are being serious and really do have this plan, in which case Id be interested in hearing what it is.

If these abuses didn't occur why the Law?

On July 12, 1974, the National Research Act (Pub. L. 93-348) was signed into law in the United States, thereby creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

for more read encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com...

You don't see how what is done in Prisons, Mental Institutions, Youth Rehabilitation centers, Kindergardens, etc. can be modified and applied to Policy Studies which create the Public Acts of Law that are voted in by your Legislatures and the federal Legislatures, well, consider, that the same Policy Making Bodies and Universities, make Laws for Both free and Incarcerated Citizen's. What better way to relieve burdens on Prison, than just expand the scope of Prison Behavior Modification Applied behavioral Sciences onto the Masses, for overall effeciency?

just consider, if you don't see aspects applied in your everyday life, by and through law enforcement and other industries:

APF Newsletters of Ron McCrea Home


Modification and its Discontents:
The National Conference on
Behavioral Issues in Closed Institutions
July 7, 1975
Ron McCrea
Story in .rtf
Reston, Va. — A delicately assembled and highly unusual summit conference adjourned recently at this woodland conference center outside Washington. It was a conference made up of adversaries whose detente was so fragile and whose trust was so slight that their last common act was to vote to suppress any official version of what went on during the three days they met together.

The twin forces which drew this unconventional convention together were the rapidly expanding use of behavior control technologies in prisons and mental institutions, and the equally rapidly expanding interest of government and private groups in putting these technologies under restraints.

The participants, numbering nearly 100, represented interested parties — lawyers, policymakers, behavioral scientists, institution administrators and staff, and "consumers," ex-prisoners and mental patients. Their viewpoints and interests diverged so widely that it often seemed that there were two conventions meeting in the same place — one to discuss the reform of institutions and another to discuss their abolition.

But they had agreed, under protocols worked out over a year, to talk, and the talk produced results which may bear importantly on the future both of American closed institutions and of applied behavioral science.1

Despite their disagreements, the conferees shared a heavy sense of despair at the present state of prisons and mental institutions in the United States. "You are not surprised to find that the record is of high rhetoric and abysmally low performance," said Dr. David J. Rothman, senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research at Columbia University, in his keynote speech. "Skepticism has never been so high."

And Dr. Teodoro Ayllon, a widely known behaviorist and professor of psychology and special education at Georgia State University, lamented, "We have fallen on bad times, bad times."

From comments gathered over the three days of the conference, June 13-15, the "bad times" amount to this: American prisons and mental institutions are at a crossroads. They are too large, there are too many of them, they are too costly, they are notorious for inhuman abuses, and most of all they are bankrupt in terms of working for anybody — the people who inhabit them, the professionals who staff them, or the society which supports them. Pressure for performance is high, yet cynicism over "rehabilitation" as an institutional goal is equally high. Something has to give — but what?

Here is where new technologies of behavior control take on importance. "If we are running the danger of reviving the rehabilitation ethic, it will come through the behavior modifier," Rothman said. "Behavior modification holds out a number of attractions for a group convinced that nothing is now working.2

"Behavior modification is closet punishment unrestrained by law," warned psychologist Edward M. Opton Jr., dean of the graduate school at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. "Our institutions are festering sores on the body politic. They stink; it's the smell of the absolute corruption of power. But in the jargon of behavior modification the stench of these festering sores is the sweet perfume of positive and negative reinforcement doing their job.3

There was considerable fear, then, that behavior modification would become the latest lifeboat for institutions that have long deserved to sink. There was also apprehension directed toward behavior modification technology itself. What are these technologies which mother such contention?

The conference could not agree on the scope of "behavior modification," but laymen's explanations usually divide modern behavior control technology into two groups: biomedical techniques and psychological conditioning techniques.

Chief among the biomedical techniques are psychosurgery (for example, lobotomies), psychopharmacology (the use of mind-altering or mood-altering drugs), electroconvulsive therapy or ECT (shock treatments), and electronic stimulation of the brain or ESB (the implantation of electrodes in the brain to regulate behavior).

The term "behavior modification" is usually reserved for psychological conditioning techniques which include "applied behavior analysis" and "behavior therapy." Behavior therapy deals with internal states such as fear and anxiety, as well as observable behavior. Applied behavior analysis, the child of psychologist B.F. Skinner, recognizes no such internal states and deals only with observable behavior, often in groups.

Both conditioning techniques share an approach to human behavior that stresses systematic reward and punishment as the key to behavior change. It is the ability of total institutions like prisons and mental hospitals to deliver just such systematic rewards and punishments that makes the behavioral approach so attractive to them, and also what makes it so horrifying to their critics.

Total institutions can reward their inmates not only with praise but with many basic necessities and amenities for living — money, plain or varied meals, permission to enjoy social life and recreation, and a host of other small freedoms. Institutions can also deprive inmates of these things and in addition submit them to "aversive," or painful, techniques. (Examples have included shocks, and drugs which induce prolonged vomiting or the experience of drowning).

It is these kinds of tactics employed as therapy which have stirred public and legal debate. It was this debate, along with what one conference workshop agreed was a "quantum leap in the technology," that produced the National Conference on Behavioral Issues in Closed Institutions at Reston.4

The Abolitionist Offensive
A coalition of mental patients' and prisoners' rights groups, together with civil liberties lawyers and others, pushed hard at the conference to persuade the rest that the regulation of behavior technology is hopeless in coercive institutions and that, moreover, progress in corrections and mental health requires nothing less than the destruction of the institutions themselves.

"Total institutions crush the spirit, break the spirit, "argued Edward Opton. "It's in their nature to do so. This is not because wardens and guards are sadists, though some are, but because they must do so…. Total institutions are places of great pressure and strain," he continued. "The administration must use social and psychological strategies to hold them together."

Among the strategies he listed were indeterminism (holding people for an indefinite time), rewards and punishments ("the brutal treatment of a few serves as an example and an incentive to the remainder"), and "breaking the spirit and will" through "degrading initiation ceremonies, isolation from social supports, and proving to inmates that they can be made to behave as robots in the most intimate parts of their lives."

"Every tool of social and psychological power which could be turned to this purpose has been turned to this purpose," Opton warned. "Any powerful technique which can be abused will be abused." He made it clear that he is convinced behavior modification can and will be abused by institutions, and that the professionalism of behavior therapists is no deterrent to that abuse. "Environmental contingencies on administrators will require them to replace any behaviorists who fail to use their full power with more complaisant ones," he said.

Janet Gotkin, a former mental patient and the founder of Mental Patients Resistance of Westchester County, N.Y., called behavior modification "the newest growth industry in the mental health field." The questions surrounding it are not questions of technology, she said, but "questions of power — who should have it, and whether anyone should have the power to watch over another."

"Mental hospitals are bins for society's refuse — poor people, old people, children, women, the peculiar, the radical, the sad, the nonconforming, the eccentric. These human garbage dumps, masquerading as hospitals, are instruments for social control," she asserted.

As for behaviorists' offer of help, she was cynical. In her experience, she said, "the electroshocks, the restraints were called 'help.' It was always called 'help.'" As for regulating behavior technology, she said: "Ideas of informed consent or free choice are laughably out of context in a mental hospital. It is impossible to implement any guideline truly protective of an incarcerated person."

Gotkin attacked the conference as "self-serving," concerned only "to better the condition of behavior modification, not to ask the question of whether there should be prisons or mental hospitals at all. The real question this conference is asking itself is, 'What can we get away with as keepers? How far can we go?’"

Rudi Clemons, a black ex-prisoner, prison organizer, and project assistant for the National Prison Project in Washington, told the predominantly white audience that "you have as much chance of pulling off behavior modification programs in prison as you have of going back to England."

"Time stops for a prisoner when he enters the gate and everything that goes on in there is meaningless," Clemons said. "It is when he is released from the institution that time starts again. And when he is released the situation outside is the same as when he went in. The job market hasn't improved. Opportunity hasn't improved."

Clemons suggested that behavioral scientists might best put their talents toward "constructing the type of environment that is an alternative to prison. You can't make prisons better," he said, "the only thing you can do is get rid of them."5

Dr. Peter Breggin, a young psychiatrist whose Maryland-based Center for the Study of Psychiatry has led a crusade against psychosurgery, made his point from the floor.

"Don't you notice there's something odd happening here?" he said. "Here are all these kind doctors offering people help and yet the very people they want to help are telling them they don't want it. Why are the recipients of the services against the donors of the services?"

The answer, said Breggin, is in the answer to the question "Whose agent are you?"

"Conflict only enters when the behavior modifier enters as the agent of the institution," Breggin said. "Whenever you have involuntary relationships you have an adversary system. The more involuntary the relations, the more adversarial the situation. In schools it's the child vs. the teacher. In a prison it's the prisoner against the administration. In a mental hospital the tension is nearly as great as in a concentration camp."

Breggin urged his medical brethren to refuse to be the agent of any coercive institution, and received loud applause. At lunch, he said: "I'm getting a lot of well-wishinq from my fellow professionals, but nobody has come up to me and said, 'Peter, I heard you and I'm breaking free.'"

Ground Rules for Policy: An Inventory of Suggestions
Despite the abolitionists' strong pressures, the majority of people attending the conference were either unable or unwilling to buy the abolitionist argument, however much they sympathized with it. They seemed to feel that the destruction of prisons and mental institutions was not a viable option; or if it was, that it was not a desirable one; or that, even if the option was both viable and desirable, it would not leave them much to talk about. So the talk gravitated toward reform.

Discussion took place in small, private workshops. The workshops were numbered and there was no way to learn who was in which group. This was one of the many precautions taken to cool the political volatility of the conference and promote honest exchange. The numbered workshops were carefully mixed to include many viewpoints. (A second set of workshops for people with related backgrounds never took place.)

On the final day of the conference the chairmen and chairwomen of the workshops summarized the thinking of the groups before a general session. Some reports showed consensus; others were simply strings of statements presented without weight. But certain patterns emerged from the reports which showed the direction of thinking of key individuals in law, medicine, government, and community organization. Here are the chief points which emerged:

Large institutions have basic flaws which must be eliminated before anything useful can be done.

One workshop put it this way: "On coercive institutions, we agreed that there are too many, they are too large, and they house certain residents quite inappropriately. The primary issue facing the nation in this area now is to attend to the size and the number and the inappropriate residents of these institutions. Insofar as behavior modification or any psychotherapy technique legitimizes the coercive institution as it now stands, extending its life as it now is, it may be that such legitimization procedures are categorically unwarranted."

Another presentation said: "There was a very clear sense that by the time things get down to the so called 'helpee' they are very different from the problems conceived by the would-be 'helper.' There are real concerns that the brutality and atrocity and inhumanity that we all know about may not merely be occasional accidents and aberrations of a fundamentally benign system, but may be endemic to any total system. If that's so, the present system may be so constructed that there is no such thing as voluntariness and no such thing as informed consent, and we may well be dealing with Frankenstein's monster."

Prisons and mental institutions, while similar, are not identical and require different policies.

The conferees had an easier time with prisons than with mental institutions, mainly because the issue of mental competence to make therapy choices was clearer. "Prisoners are competent to stand trial and be convicted and should be considered competent to make choices within prison programs," one group leader explained. Another confessed that in his group "there was some feeling that the mental institution scene is harder and more complex to get a handle on. Its suppositions, the reasons you get there, aren't quite as clear."

Prisons should exist for public safety only and cease to justify themselves with claims to rehabilitation.

At least two workshops could report "that there will be a need for closed custody corrections" in the future. One group said that prisons should house only "dangerous individuals" and predicted that such a policy would reduce the present prison population to five percent of its current size. The other group refused to discuss "dangerousness" but left it simply that "if people are sent to institutions [it should be understood that] it is because society wants to send them there for the sake of society," however well or poorly society defines its sake. "In other words," the group said, "remove the rehabilitation treatment mythology."

Prison sentences should be short and fixed.

There was near-unanimous agreement at the conference that indeterminate sentences should be abolished and replaced by short, fixed, sentences. "Indeterminate sentences should be abolished because they preclude any voluntary participation in therapy," one group reported. "Any program where there is an expectation of affecting your release date is inherently coercive and inherently useless."

Another group reviewed a proposal that there be sentences of one, two, three, four, and eight years for various kinds of crimes, with the understanding that the terms were fixed and would be "without regard to what one did or how one behaved or what one's progress was" in the institution.

Under such conditions, the group's spokesman said, "an appropriately voluntary [behavior modification] program with appropriate safeguards might be tried, and at least if it failed one would have a clearer idea of why, and it would not have failed for many of the reasons which are of so much concern to us here."

A range of voluntary programs should be available, including programs generated by inmates.

Several workshops urged a variety of programs for institutions for inmates to choose from, but said that such programs should be "voluntary and independent of extraneous incentives such as money, privileges, or reduction of sentences." Other suggestions were that inmates should have the right to create programs of their own, and that the focus of psychological programs should not be "on deviancy or curing deviancy, but on building coping skills in the same way that a person on the outside might seek the help of a therapist" to build such skills.

Prisoners and mental patients must have more power over their lives.

One idea mentioned several times was that prisoners and mental patients should be taught behavior modification techniques to use for "counter-control." "If you believe that behavior modification is a powerful tool, and if you believe that power needs to be redistributed, then behavior modification should be taught to the oppressed so that they can better deal with an unfair world," one report said.

The same report suggested that institution administrators might employ behavior systems from above "as a management control," with goals and results posted openly. "For example, would it be useful to reward a guard on a cell — give him an additional $1,000 bonus — for each one of the inmates who graduates from his cell who is not arrested for a year?" the group conjectured.

The other major recommendation was the prisoners be given the right to organize. While there was no consensus, several groups reported "substantial agreement," with practical reservations noted about how prisoner unions would work.

Human rights Committees and other regulatory mechanisms might do limited good.

The conference was generally skeptical about the promise of rules, guidelines, and procedural safeguards to govern behavior modification programs in closed institutions. A detailed proposal by Paul R. Friedman, managing attorney of the Mental Health Law Project in Washington, received wide discussion and some workshops recommended his model cautiously in their reports.6

The most common safeguards urged for behavior programs were flat sentences; a ban on deprivations not needed for institutional security; and human rights committees to oversee behavior programs, set limits, and investigate complaints. One report included a proposal that such human rights committees be composed of elected inmates at prisons, parents of mentally retarded children at institutions for the mentally retarded, and patients or ex-patients at mental hospitals.

Beyond the concern for inmates and institutions, there is a basic need to question what constitutes crime, deviance, and mental incompetence.

This was a conference of specialists, not philosophers, but there was a strong undercurrent of concern that the norms which cause people to be sent to prisons and mental institutions should not go unexamined.

One workshop report included the speculation that the preponderance of men in prisons might be explained by men's tendency to "act out" in reaction to frustration, whereas the preponderance of women in mental institutions might be explained by women's tendency to "internalize" their reactions to the frustrations of a sexist world.

Another concluded that closed institutions should be phased out and that "behavioral scientists should explore the larger policy issues and construct programs to confront them." In this vein, Lennox S. Hinds of the National Conference of Black Lawyers asserted in a general session that "behaviorists and lawyers have a myopic view of what constitutes aberrant behavior."

"I have some problems," he said, "when I see the weight of the state being focused on person-to-person crime when nothing is being done on a global level where a policymaker sits and literally executes thousands of people."

Cadenza: The Leak-proof Conference
During the first two days of the conference, radicals and the "establishment" maintained detente for the sake of exchange. The conference steering committee had tried to balance the representation both at the conference generally and in the mixed workshops. Everyone came with the condition that there were to be no votes, polls, or resolutions generated at the conference and that individuals could withdraw their names at any time.

For two days there was exchange. One chairman quipped that in his workshop "the lawyers were frustrated by the imprecision of the psychiatrists, the policymakers were frustrated by the consumers' idealism, the consumers were frustrated by the psychiatrists' denial of their own power, and the psychiatrists were glad that business was so good."

On the third day, the conference collapsed into paranoia. After the morning's business on June 15, attorney Edgar Brenner, director of the Behavior Law Center of the Institute for Behavioral Research, Inc., which sponsored the conference, rose to say that there had been some misunderstanding about the publication of official proceedings of the conference.

Despite contrary impressions, he said, there had always been plans to publish proceedings as an aid to policymakers. The steering committee knew of these plans, he said, and in fact the proceedings were required under the terms of the National Science Foundation grant which helped finance the conference and the expenses of everyone who attended it.

An uproar broke out. Its reason had been hinted at the day before in Paul Friedman's address. "There was a suspicion among public interest lawyers," he said, "that this conference would be cleverly devised to promote the behavior mod point of view." Friedman was able to say then that those fears had proved unfounded. But now there was panic in the hall.

"We compromised ourselves by coming here at all and talking about closed institutions!" said a prisoners' union representative, noting that the last time word of such collaboration got out "we were set back five years."

"I came here with the assurance that I wouldn't be legitimizing this conference in some future proceedings," a woman said with some distress. "I never would have come if I'd known about this."

Edward Opton felt double-crossed. "I was speaking to you as a highly sophisticated group, not a general public," he complained. "I said things I wouldn't say to the Washington Post or to Senator Kennedy's committee if I were lobbying for a bill."

Opton also complained that because he thought he was speaking off the record while others might have known they were speaking for the record, "an accurate record of the talks here won't be accurate!"7

Others expressed different concerns. One man said he was worried that official proceedings would "talk about inmates in impersonal terms" and fail to communicate "any sense of the human interest expressed here." Several others feared that a compilation would come out sounding like mush, ignoring "the widely divergent points of view we have heard."

The convention sponsors back pedalled quickly. Dr. H. McIlvaine Parsons, the kindly executive director of the Institute for Behavioral Research, Inc., said IBR had no funds for publication yet and the whole matter was up in the air. A representative from the National Science Foundation waived NSF's requirement for proceedings on the spot.

An emergency session of the conference steering committee was called, and the committee quickly voted to suppress any publications except a list of topics discussed at the conference which would be distributed only to participants.8

The speeches and results of workshops, a spokesman for the committee assured the conference, "will not be published to the world."

Received in New York July 7, 1975

End Notes
The conference did not meet as a policy body but its discussions will certainly affect policy across the country. Most of the participants were highly placed, and those without titles played important roles in institutions and political organizations.

A full version of Rothman's talk, "Behavior Modification in Total Institutions: An Historical overview," is published in The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 5, No. 1 (February 1975), available from the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, 623 Warburton Ave., Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. 10706.

Opton's formal remarks, together with the key papers presented on legal issues, are scheduled to be published in full in Vol. 17 No. 1 of the Arizon Law Review.

A glossary of behavioral terms used in behavior modification, a behavior modification bibliography, and a listing of major court cases which may affect the use of behavior modification in prisons and mental institutions are available from the Behavior Law Center of the Institute for Behavioral Research, Inc., 2429 Linden Lane, Silver Spring, Md. 20910.

Gotkin and Clemons respond to the argument for regulation in the Arizona Law Review issue mentioned in Note 3.

Friedman's plan is published in the Arizona Law Review, ibid.

All of the information in this report was gathered at general sessions which were open to the press.

Members of the steering committee were: Judith Areen, professor of law, Georgetown Law Center; Alvin J. Bronstein, executive director, National Prison Project, ACLU Foundation; Rudi Clemons, National Prison Project; Paul Friedman, managing attorney, Mental Health Law Project, ACLU Foundation; Dr, Joseph Perpich, senior professional associate, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences; Dr. Saleem Shah, chief, Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency, National Institute of Mental Health; Herbert Silverberg, staff director, Commission on the Mentally Disabled, American Bar Association; Daniel L. Skoler, staff director, Commission on Correctional Facilities and Services, American Bar Association; and Serena Stier, Ph.D., administrative officer for policy studies, American Psychological Association.

©1975 Ron McCrea


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ron McCrea is an Alicia Patterson Foundation award winner on leave from The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin). This article may be Published with credit to Mr. McCrea, The Capital Times, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.

The Control Unit, formerly called the CARE Program (Control and Rehabilitative Effort), is now called the Control Unit Treatment Program. It is an experimental Behavior Modification Program based on a system of rewards and punishment. That is, a prisoner who will change his behavior and attitude or give up his values and beliefs, and conform to what the prison administration considers acceptable behavior, may be rewarded by being returned to the general prison population, either here at Marion or at another penitentiary.
For those who do not go along with the program, prison officials use Sensory Deprivation, or complete isolation, in an attempt to "break" the will of the prisoner. By being kept in a Control Unit, the prisoner is being deprived of culture and environmental contacts, which tends to bring about organic changes, that is, degenerative changes in the nerve cells, which can result in death, primarily because culture and environmental contacts are essential to SURVIVAL. Physical and social contacts are minimized, in everything including contact with families: Prisoners confined to the Control Unit are compelled to visit their families in a special visiting room via monitored telephones—a glass partition serves to separate the prisoner from his visitor.
In the words of one of the three psychiatrists, who visited the Federal Marion Prison primarily to inspect the Control Unit Treatment Program for the purpose of giving professional testimony on behalf of the prisoners subjected to the program, Dr. Bernard Rubin states that "it is not a program—either in policy or implementation…. There is insufficient staff, without training. There are no resources for the programs: counseling, almost none or none occurs; educational, does not exist; vocational, almost non-existent; recreational, none. No group activities, with or without staff." He goes on to say that "the setting and its organization demeans, dehumanizes, and shapes behavior so that violent behavior is the result…the organization and operation of the setting produces or accentuates frustration, rage, and helplessness."
These programs are not voluntary, the prisoner has no right to choose the treatment of his or her choice, and since they are secret and not open to public scrutiny, there are no safeguards to protect the prisoner from unethical or illegal abuses. As Dr. Rubin says, "Coercive programs which attempt to change attitude or behavior always fail unless you kill the prisoner, permanently disable him, or keep him incarcerated for life." Some prisoners here at Marion in the Control Unit Treatment at Program have been told that they will be compelled to endure the remainder of their sentence in the program. Some of these men are serving life sentences.

read Pages 440 and 442 (Page 441 conveniently not shown):
books.google.com... ig=DyEpMUFrhTtr92tGdS_7Z1IsbRg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA440,M1
Or, Human Behavior in the Social Environment from an African-American
Pages 19 and 20, proposing Behavior Modification for Prisoners, Kindergardeners, etc. at:
books.google.com... =SmIPsQxw60P4z839I66BN-m8jPg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA20,M1

A behavior modification facility (or youth residential program) is a residential educational and treatment institution enrolling adolescents who are perceived as displaying antisocial behavior, in an attempt to alter their conduct. As of 2008 there were about 650 nongovernmental, residential programs in the United States offering treatment services for adolescents.[1] Some similar institutions are operated as components of governmental education or correctional systems.
The behavior modification methodologies used vary, but a combination of positive and negative reinforcement is typically used.[citation needed] Often these methods are delivered in a contingency management format such as a point system or level system. Such methodology has been found to be highly effective in the treatment of disruptive disorders (see meta-analysis of Chen & Ma (2007)[2]. Positive reinforcement mechanisms include points, rewards and signs of status, while negative reinforcement may include time-outs, point deductions, reversal of status, prolonged stays at a facility, physical restraint, or even corporal punishment. A newer approach uses graduated sanctions.[3] Behavior modification within the penal system lost popularity in the 1970s-1980s due to a large number of abuses (see Cautilli & Weinberg (2007) [4]), but recent trends in the increase in U.S. crime and recent focus on reduction of recidivism have given such programs a second look [3] [5]. [6]To reduce the tendency for abuse, a strong push has occurred to certify or license behavior modifiers[7][8] or to have such practices limited to licensed psychologists.[4]
Often the practice of behavior modification in facilities comes into question (see recent interest in Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, Aspen Education Group and the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools). Often these types of restrictive issues are discussed as part of ethical and legal standards (see Professional practice of behavior analysis).
While boot camp type programs have not been shown to be successful, largely because they represent punishment devoid of context (unlike in the military, where passing boot camp initiates one into the service), programs such as teaching family homes have been extensively researched and show positive gains. Research shows that they can be used to reduce delinquency while adolescents are in the home and post release [see Kingsley (2006) [9]]. In general, these types of programs take a behavioral engineering approach to reducing problem behavior and building skills.
In general, behavior modification programs that are used in facilities or in the natural environment have the largest effect size and lead to an estimated 15% reduction in recidivism.[10] While this reduction appears to be modest, it holds potention in the U.S. given the large number of people in the prison system. Increasingly behavior modification models based on the principles of applied behavior analysis are being developed to model delinquency[11]

[edit on 23-1-2009 by PhyberDragon]

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin


Dude.Yopu are losing it.Stop

Total institutions can reward their inmates not only with praise but with many basic necessities and amenities for living — money, plain or varied meals, permission to enjoy social life and recreation, and a host of other small freedoms. Institutions can also deprive inmates of these things and in addition submit them to "aversive," or painful, techniques. (Examples have included shocks, and drugs which induce prolonged vomiting or the experience of drowning).

Praise and Reward:
Bush takes away your Freedom, Obama offers HOPE and restores little Freedoms, because, it keeps you compliant and HOPING that change is coming to give back larger freedoms, which just aren't coming in the next Presidency, unless, Society conforms to acceptable Standards which satisfy our Wardens.

Basic Necessities and Ammenities for Living and the Deprivation thereof the same:
Welfare, Stimulus, Bail Outs, etc. Consumer foods, products and services will be made cheaper and more available, SCHIP and TANF benefits are raised, vending machines in school and privelages awarded to use them, and expanded school menus. Freedom from incarceration and reprogramming methods such as anger management and counseling for the non compliant and resistant. Freedom to travel, monitored of course, and to leave the Country or just to move about it. And a host of other small freedoms [insert your benefit for compliance and non resistance here, and the revocation of those benefits for failure to do so].

Aversive or Painful techniques:
Military, Police, Paramilitary Police (Ie: SWAT, Riot Police, ICE, DEA, IRS, ATF& e, and a host of alphabet agencies), and Parapolice Military (Ie: tanks closing off National emergency Cities and arresting looters) using lethal and non lethal deterence. Joint Police Military, and civilian agency Urban warfare training-- guised as Iraq and Domestic terror training-- non- lethal civil unrest training and devices such as: batons sheilds (as weapons) mace, tasers (electro- shock), martial arts, and psychopharmaceuticals (under a compassionate doctor's care of course) which have severe and nasty side affects, whether the person is lawfully committed or not.

When I was put in a nut- hut I answered no to the admittance questions at the police station, I answered no, they reported that I answered yes, at the Behavioral Administrative processing center, they and the police reported I answered yes, at the Asylum, upon admittance, I answered no, they reported I answered yes, in the Asylum I answered the psychiatrists, therapists, and staff no, they all reported I answered yes. They had a field day doping and drugging me.

The question: did you say you wanted to blow up the Court House.

I had never made such an outrageous claim. I was put on the local, State, Federal, and InterNational "Suspected" Terror Watch lists for a second time.

The first time, I was at the Court House for a hearing over my daughter, I had a bag full of legal papers and recordings which were x- rayed and manually searched 4 times (I had gone out 3 times to have a cigarette and was searched on every entry), but, a Clerk who disliked me told the guard he thought I had a bomb, they cancelled the vital hearing (which I never got to have as later case trumped it, but, would not have if I had made the hearing) and cleared the Court House, except for me, called in all the agencies- police- fire dept.- bomb squad, etc. , the guard searched it for my 5th search and found only my legal papers and recordings. Still, I was put on the list as a "suspect" and informed that it'd be unlikely I ever came off.

So, I'm on their lists twice. Now, I could care less if the Court House blew up. If I knew someone was going to do it, I'd turn my back and pretend I knew nothing.

Still don't see it? Take another mood- altering PsychoPharmaceutical and stick a fork in yourself, you're done. You are an institutionlized person. You are in a prison. And only Resistance to their doctrine and Laws will set you free, a route few ever take as they hold their breath waiting for Rebels to come along and set them free. But, why should anyone rebel for those who won't and don't want to rebel for themselves.

[edit on 23-1-2009 by PhyberDragon]