April 1963

ing” process by which alcoholics are ready have an AA group or, if it does KEEP AA ALIVE IN OUR JAILS! swept up, the short shrift they get in not have one, would not welcome the the courts, and their endless round offer of an outside group to come in by Austin & MacCormick . through our revolving door jails con- and conduct one. The first prison stitute one of society’s greatest group was established at San Quen- It’s t h e only light in a dark picture, shames. AA has brought some light tin Prison in California in the early into this dark picture, and must 1940’~~ soon after Clinton Duffy bea world-famous penologist tells us steadily bring more and more. came Warden. It is interesting to A man or woman who has been note that, having retired from state convicted only of public drunken- service, he has just become Execu- F all the dark corners of the earth ing and maintaining sobriety than tive Director of the San Francisco 0 in which Alcoholics Anonymous has taken root and grown to any other program or service our over-crowded and understaffed menness, disorderly conduct, or one of the other misdemeanors with which an intoxicated person may be Council on Alcoholism. There is one fact which all those mature strength, the 502 prison and tal hospitals have at their disposal. charged, will ordinarily not be sent who are thinking of establishing an jail groups with over 20,000 mem- There can be, however, no deny- to a state or federal prison, although AA group in a jail or prison should bers and the 445 groups in mental, ing the fact that American jails are in some states misdemeanants, as keep in mind. It is this: key prison veterans’, tubercular and other hos- places into which little light ever pen- well as felons, are sent to the state personnel understand AA’s aims and pitals with about eleven thousand etrates. Of 3,100 county jails rated prison. There are, however, several have respect for what it has accommembers give me the greatest per- by federal inspectors, 97% were thousand alcoholics in the prisons of plished. Some of them, however, do sonal satisfaction, because of my rated under 60% and 78 under 50 the country and many more thou- not have the same urlderstanding of professional career of 45 years in the on a scale of 100. A California com- sands who are problem drinkers in its methods-the necessity for closed correctional field and my life-long mission, of which I was chairman, one degree or another. meetings, for having AAs conduct interest also in the field of mental rated 33 of the 58 county jails of that In the California prison system, the meetings, for non-AA institution health. progressive state as poor or very for example, there are about 24,000 officials to resist their natural desire It is perhaps not fair to call these poor, 20 as fair, and only 5 as meet- to take charge, and so on. My advice hospitals “dark comers,” for human- ing the minimum standards set by prisoners, of whom about 3,000 were is that, tactfully but firmly, represenity and modem medical science have the state authorities. convicted of passing bad checks. This tatives of outside AA groups stand brought light and hope into the bleak In most of the county jails of the is only one of several categories of their ground and not permit them- “insane asylums” and the vegetable country, no ameliorating influence of prisoners in whose criminal behavior selves to be forced into abandonment I bins for the “incurably ill” of the any sort, no application of either hu- excessive drinking has played a ma- of fundamental procedures. Proce- I past. manity or science, no effort to sal- jor role. dures and principles are as interde- It is a particularly significant trib- vage the inmates is ever seen, with Of the state and federal prisons pendent as the Twelve Steps and the ute to AA that it is welcomed by the one exception-when AA comes in and adult reformatories in the United Twelve Traditions. They must be administrators and staffs of mental and stays in, .although it is usually States, about 200 in number, I do kept inviolate in the prison as well as hospitals to which alcoholics are working under almost insuperable not know of one which does not al- in the free world. committed. They may well welcome handicaps with men and women who it. AA, in my opinion, can d o more, are hard to reach and hard to hold. by its work inside the hospital and It is in this area that I hope AA after the patient leaves, to increase groups will increase in number and the chances of an alcoholic achiev- in effectiveness. The “street-clean-