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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – AA AND PRISONS – RS 06410.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-aa-and-prisons-rs-06410.mp3 Duration: 01:21:17
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We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities.
Tapes of this meeting will be available at the tape sales booth in the Convention Center. It is my pleasure to chair this meeting this morning, and as it's headed up, it's AA in Prisons. I'm going to call on our first speaker, who is Amos Reid, and he's the Secretary of the Department of Corrections, the State of Washington, from Olympia, Washington. He has, I think, been active to do with AA in prisons in that area.
And I ask you to welcome Jim for Amos, I'm sorry. Thank you kindly, Helen. AA members, guests, friends. Alcoholics Anonymous has been known to me for over 30 years. During that time, I've had the rewarding experience of seeing firsthand the positive, sustaining, and healing power of this remarkable human endeavor. My present assignment as Secretary of the State of Washington, Department of Corrections, includes 6,300 adult prisoners and 24,000 parolees, probationers, and work releases.
Previous experience includes correctional work in North Carolina, Florida, Oregon, and Illinois. Wherever my professional and managerial career has taken me, I have been shocked and saddened by the devastation resulting from alcohol use and abuse. It would be presumptuous of me to enumerate the ways in which alcohol impacts upon and ripples across the lives of babies, children, and adults. You are the true experts on the subject of alcoholism.
My experiences, by comparison, are very small and insignificant. Yet each one in this room has had unique personal experiences that bear upon the subject. It is the sharing of these experiences and the collective distilled wisdom of all that have made Alcoholics Anonymous into an international force for help for alcoholics. It was Mark Twain who said, It will gratify a few and amaze all the rest. While AA is not perfect, the organization's good results certainly have amazed and confused a lot of people.
By the way, no one knows better than alcoholics that failure is an ever-present possibility, as it is with all humans. But understanding friendship and faith can overcome otherwise insurmountable problems and compulsions. Each of you has become a model, a friend, and a helper for all other AA members throughout the world. In fact, the positive influence of AA ripples far beyond the members to relatives, friends, and a host of others.
How good it is that persons sustain and help themselves by sustaining and helping others. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a program of force other than the force of caring and example. AA members are the emissaries of the university of humanity. You represent goodness, mercy, and understanding friendship at their very best. Like Martin Luther King said, You too have had a dream to help the helpless and to love the unloved.
In so doing, there is a rebirth of lost lives that, like the phoenix bird, rises from the ashes of the past. The year 1985 marks this wonderful 50th anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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The Washington State Penitentiary, back in the state that I come from, had one of the first local chapters. It began in 1945. A conservative estimate of alcohol and drug abuse problems among offenders is about 60 percent. Others will quote a range as high as 80 percent. The November 1983 Department of Corrections anonymous survey of inmates confirmed the former figure. The present-day offender tends to be a poly-abuser and often does not discriminate between alcohol and drugs.
The pure alcoholic or heroin addict or marijuana smoker appears to be something of a thing of the past. During incarceration, alcohol use by offenders is far reduced to use in the general society. Most offenders who are drinking daily do not drink at all in prison. Some drink occasionally, perhaps a couple of times a year or whenever there is some pruno available. We can observe the alcoholic's drinking pattern increasing as he nears parole.
Typically, and of course as they near parole, they are moving out into the community more and into work release. Typically, the drinking will cease in major institutions, is occasional in the forestry camp setting, and becomes a problem in work release, probation, and parole in the forestry camps. Alcoholics Anonymous members will most likely attribute this phenomenon to an increase in availability and the progression of the disease of alcoholism even during periods of abstinence.
They will refute the theory that the pressures involved in reentering society lead a person to drinking again. The pressures are viewed as a rationalization as opposed to the true cause. Local chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous are well established at each of the prisons in Washington. Offenders that work in training release attend meetings in the community. Alcoholics Anonymous is seen as a primary source of self-help groups providing positive sponsorship which is capable of establishing a proper social network upon parole.
Each month we have an average of 300 community volunteer contacts and 1,400 inmate contacts for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. One of the most recent developments in the field of alcoholism concerns the adult children of alcoholics. This is an outgrowth of the theory of predictable roles within an alcoholic family. The assumption is that the defensive roles children learn when they have an alcoholic parent also lead to predictable problems as an adult.
The emotions involved are low esteem, anger, and depression. As a result of this history, adult children of alcoholics often marry alcoholics and or are alcoholics themselves. Many community alcoholism centers now have workshops aimed at addressing these very special problems. Alcoholism as a family disease continues to be a major thesis. Rather than viewing alcoholism as an individual problem resolvable via treatment of the individual, it is viewed as a systems problem requiring help for all family members.
This has greatly increased the roles of family therapy, Al-Anon, Al-Ateen, Al-Atat, and so on. My 47 years of personal experience in public education, public welfare, and criminal justice have thoroughly convinced me of the necessity for a sustained group effort in addressing problems of alcohol and drugs. Whether through biological predisposition, a right social environment, or combinations of these, the problems of alcoholism best yield to experience sharing, caring, and support.
Permit me to share a few of my own personal experiences that emphasize this relationship. I recall Al-Anon, a master of social work whose fine career had been ruined by alcohol. No one wanted to employ him because of his history of drinking and his erratic behavior. Yet he was brilliant, truly brilliant, and very capable when sober. He was given a chance to reestablish his career and his family life by being employed as a juvenile counselor in a boys' training school.
Subsequently, he was promoted to chief counselor, and later it was my pleasure to promote him to assistant superintendent. He worked as an assistant superintendent for 11 years.
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During all these years, he was sustained by Alcoholics Anonymous and by personal friendships. Not once did he get drunk. Sadly, he began drinking again when his wife became ill of suspected cancer. This stress was too much for him to bear. He lost his position and his health deteriorated. Nevertheless, he had enjoyed many years of professional achievement, self-worth, and good family life. Another alcoholic, P.H., was a faithful friend of mine and was introduced to me by a county official.
This official brought P.H. to my office and apologized for asking me to give him a job. The county official said that P.H. had come to the county's attention as a penniless vagrant who certainly looked the part. I asked P.H. if he wanted to work, and he said that he did. I asked if he would work and remain sober if I gave him a job. He assured me that he would. He stated that he was an experienced chef, a ship steward, and a cook of many talents.
He was not exaggerating. He had the papers to prove his assertions. I employed him, and he worked with me for many, many years. His work was excellent, his creative cooking was most commendable, and his pleasant demeanor was a pleasure to all of us. He remained sober and faithful until, sadly, he, too, turned again to alcohol. His behavior was so unacceptable that he lost his position, but he never lost his sense of friendship and goodwill.
Although he moved out of the area, he faithfully sent me a beautiful card each St. Patrick's Day for many years. He was a really beautiful person. Two other employees, a man and his wife, sustained sobriety for over ten years and retired without turning back to alcohol. These fine people were very active in AA and sponsored many, many others. After retirement, they went into business for themselves and continue their active participation to the present day.
I share these examples of the influence of caring people upon the lives of others. You have so many other examples that you could share. Wherever my career has taken me, there have always been members of AA who have offered their help to others. Some of them have been prisoners themselves. Interestingly, adult prison wardens have attested to the dependability of those alcoholics who have invested in Alcoholics Anonymous.
These men and women have been stabilizing influence in the prisons, and this is true to the present day. It has been my privilege to have warden friends and associates throughout the United States and Canada. Jim O'Sullivan is no stranger to me, and Jim Estelle goes back longer than either of us wants to mention. All of my friends have spoken of their support for and confidence in AA. This support has been stated both privately and publicly.
It is not uncommon for wardens and other key staff to show their support for AA by their personal attendance at AA meetings. In Washington State, the Department of Corrections spends $680,000 per year to provide substance abuse treatment. The Department contracts with private sector agencies for this service. In general, the treatment is self-awareness training. By law, the treatment is limited to convicted felons in their last year of incarceration.
Other generalized programs are ongoing. The Department encourages follow-up community support via volunteer groups such as AA and Narcotics Anonymous, which serve 1,951 offenders in addition to those in the prison who are involved in the institution-based programs. Establishing local chapters of AA at all Washington State prisons assures a step-by-step transition back to the community. The evolution has been long and very successful.
Much remains to be done. Many people had a hand in this, from the eight inmates who met in the big yard of Walla Walla in the 1940s. Correspondence and help came from as far away as Los Angeles, Portland, and the Seattle area. The Education Department personnel assisted in initiating correspondence to the Alcoholics Foundation in New York. It would be impossible to name all of these people as the numbers would be staggering.
Alcoholics Anonymous has continued to grow and to help, always trying to carry the message to suffering alcoholics. Presently at the main prison, there are three AA meetings a week with 100 inmates attending. Meetings a Week with 100 Inmates Attending, Wilshire Group at Medium Security Complex has
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always had three meetings a week, I'm told. There are presently 110 sponsors who attend the AA meetings at the Washington State Penitentiary. They travel from the Seattle area, Spokane, Yakima, Tri-Cities, and the Oregon area as well as the local area. And they celebrate an anniversary date each year. This is attended by many grads who have found sobriety in these groups and have continued on the outside.
E.C. Aburian is very active and was one of the original eight who formed the Hilltoppers group that subsequently changed to the Pioneer Group. Continued attendance by the recovering ex-offender is a tremendous inspiration to the incarcerated recovering alcoholic. The program and the fellowship have helped so many inmates. AA does work, as you know, one day at a time for them to recover and to maintain their sobriety.
A community correctional regional administrator reports that AA group members over the years have been a major volunteer resource for Washington's work release facilities. It is common for individual members to act as sponsors for offenders who lack local family and friends. AA members have been extremely responsible as sponsors. As a group, they understand offender problems and are very conscientious in terms of cooperation with the department policies regarding custody and compliance with special conditions.
In larger work release facilities, they set up in-house AA groups so that more people will have the opportunity to participate. Donald C. Nelson, health care manager, reports that the Purdy Correctional Center for Women has just completed its 14th year of experience with Alcoholics Anonymous. The founding AA sponsor from Gig Harbor, that's the name of the place, was the guest speaker at the last open house meeting in April 1985.
His presence accented the sustained health of AA sponsors. The AA volunteers who come to the meetings are very loyal. They are effective at keeping meetings on a very positive tone. And more often than not, inmates who may come to a meeting in a bad mood leave with an uplifted spirit. The chief benefit of the AA meeting is that it places the inmate on the right track to maintain sobriety. The volunteers are people from the community who are not staff members or police and whom the inmate may confide about the drinking problem.
Oftentimes friendships are born that continue long after the inmate leaves the institution. Someone was speaking to me earlier this morning here that her home had become almost a halfway house from the institution. The volunteers through the AA network have been able to provide an AA contact person in the community to which the inmate is to parole. We believe this is a positive step for the women to maintain sobriety and not return to prison.
Several inmates have become strong supporters of the AA program. As secretary of the Purdy Correctional Center for Women group, inmate C.H. coordinated the AA program for the reception diagnostic unit. Weekly meetings of this group are still held. And while she was secretary, G.B. arranged to have AA literature made available to inmates in the maximum security unit. And one success story is about former inmate E.E.
She was an active AA member while she was an inmate. After she left the institution, she pulled her life together, married, and had a family. And with the approval of the superintendent, she was returned to be a guest speaker and to share her story with the others. President Don Bonomi reports that the Indian Ridge Treatment Center is very fortunate to be in the 12th district of Washington Alcoholics Anonymous.
The positive leadership that district representatives have provided the past four years has been without a doubt a major contribution to the success of our inside-outside group. Our once-a-week meetings are attended by three to six community sponsors who always provide new and exciting challenges in their personal testimony. This leadership gives our incarcerated alcoholics the hope and support they need to begin a life of sobriety.
The prison itself benefits by having a stable group of volunteers, and these volunteer sponsors not only provide a meaningful program, but they are effective in their own screening process and bring only suitable visitors to the institution. A statement from Robert C. Lynn, the department's religious program manager, reports that prisons
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throughout the nation have tried a wide variety of treatment programs for alcoholic inmates. The one treatment program that has proved to be most helpful for the highest number of inmates is Alcoholics Anonymous. More inmates are willing to relate to this program than all the other treatment programs combined. They feel less threatened and more secure in the Alcoholics Anonymous environment than they do in more highly structured and professionally driven treatment programs.
Dr. Milton A. Maxwell, professor of sociology at the Washington State University, reports his conviction that professionals must let A.A. be A.A., but professional appreciation and working with A.A. tend to support A.A. in being A.A. at its best. His long-run perspective is just this. We need all the professional education and interest in alcoholics which we can get and get it firmly established in the professional schools themselves.
Only then will the currently growing interest be consolidated in the ongoing professional institutions in our society. But as this development takes place, he'd like to see A.A. strengthened and not weakened. The total alcoholism problem is just too big, and A.A. is just too good as a resource to be denigrated, ignored, or allowed to be weakened. In short, he believes that professionals need A.A., and A.A. need professional insight, self-understanding, and support.
The January 1983 U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin reported that almost half of the inmates in a 1979 study, but only a tenth of all persons age 18 and older of the general population, drank an average of an ounce of ethanol or more daily. In contrast, a sixth of the inmates and a third of the general population abstained from all alcohol. Almost a third of all inmates of state prisons in 1979 said that they had drunk very heavily before they committed the offense for which they were convicted.
Twenty percent of the inmates said that they drank very heavily every day the entire year before they entered prison. About 16 percent had at one time been enrolled in some kind of an alcoholic treatment program in the community. Habitual offenders and persons convicted of assault, burglary, and rape were more likely to be very heavy drinkers than were other prisoners. Eighty-seven percent of the prisoners in Washington State are under sentence for a assaultive behavior or have assault in their criminal history background.
This is shocking. I might also add that 1,400 of the 6,300 prisoners in the state of Washington's prisons are sex offenders. These figures accent the fact that state prisons are now filled with young, assaultive, drug and alcohol offenders, many of whom also have serious sex behavior problems. Efforts to give special treatment to sex offenders through state hospital sex offender programs have been discouraging, and consideration is presently being given to diverting these persons away from state hospitals and probably toward prisons where the bulk of their numbers are already to be found.
Mr. Rick Weber of the Washington State Council on Alcoholism wrote on May 14, 1985, that the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous in our area is breathtaking. This 50-year-old network has grown to over 800 meetings per week in King County alone. Often and truly it has been said that crime is the business of young people. On February 15, 1983, the Seattle P.I. newspaper reporter Mary Nye told a sad and touching story of A.A. meetings attended by children.
She said that there were young girls in striped tight knee-length pants teetering on high heels on their way to the coffee pot. Some of the boys looked like nerds. There were kids who looked like they might be president of the student body, and some who looked like the president of the biker's club. For every type of adolescent who walks the halls of any high school, there is a similar type at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for young people.
At a Friday night meeting in the University District and at a Tuesday night gathering in the cafeteria at Care Unit Hospital in Kirkland, there were at least 75 young people at each meeting. Mary Nye said that most, but not all, the kids who talk at the A.A. meetings referred to themselves as alcohol addicts, meaning they were hooked on other drugs besides and
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in addition to alcohol. Those of us who work in the criminal justice agencies are all too familiar with young people, their alcohol drug problems, and also with crime and delinquency related thereto. About 470,000 persons are in the state and federal prisons in the United States. Perhaps another 250,000 to 300,000 people are in the jails. Sadly, the vast majority of the prisoners are young persons.
Many serve the equivalent of life sentences on the installment plan as they cycle and recycle through the prisons and jails, and how sad it is. A study showed that 70 percent of Georgia's 8th graders had used alcohol, and one expert estimates that the state has 45,000 teenage alcoholics. One of every five freshmen at the University of Minnesota admits to being a heavy drinker, which is twice the rate found in 75.
A survey of 1,200 students in fraternities and sororities on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sketched a portrait of young people heavily dependent on booze to handle the stresses of life. More than half said they drink when angry or upset. Three-quarters said they drink to get drunk, and 42 percent admitted they have trouble putting down the bottle once they pick it up.
Almost 30 percent had at least one accident or injury while drunk. As this most knowledgeable assembly here knows full well, alcohol, drugs, assault and crime, sex offenses, psychosis, mental retardation, and a host of other problems are inextricably intertwined. Researchers have said that when the mother is thinking about smoking, the unborn baby becomes agitated. Imagine how the baby reacts to the drinking part of it.
A very key element in this montage of pathology and trouble is alcohol. How can societies of educated and affluent citizens persist in their worship of alcohol, treating this lethal destroyer as if it were soda pop? How can nations and communities continue to glamorize alcohol usage as the sophisticated and necessary ritual in almost all social gatherings of young and old? Even more insanely, how can citizens neglect and assault their bodies and minds with alcohol and drugs over many years and then pretend that some clever talk, therapy, additional drug or placebo can quickly reverse dependency, damage, and programmed folkways?
The neglect and naivete rise to high levels of international shame, damage, and pathology. It is not cute to indulge in alcohol and a wide variety of other drugs. It is suicidal. For 50 years, Alcoholics Anonymous has accented the need for awareness of the harm of alcohol usage and the need for abstention. Furthermore, AA has demonstrated the need for sharing and knowledge and sharing of person-to-person health stripped of glamor and game pretense, as Helen indicated in the beginning of the meeting.
And I say, may the good Lord continue to bless Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you. Thank you, Amos. I am so glad that there is a good turnout at this meeting here this morning because those of us in Alcoholics Anonymous need to hear what these gentlemen have to say. We are so fortunate that people in the field of corrections and other fields where alcoholism plays such a devastation are aware of the help that Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon and Al-Ateen can give to those people who are suffering from our disease.
We can certainly readily see from what Amos had to say and some of the statistics that he used the work that is cut out for us. Our next speaker is from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. is from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada, for those of you who don't know.
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But I'm sure most members of Alcoholics Anonymous today know where Prince Albert, Saskatchewan is. And I know that this gentleman has been well-trained by a couple of our past trustees who come from that area. And so without further ado, I'm going to introduce Jim O'Sullivan, who is the warden of the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Thank you. Thank you, Helen. Mr. Estelle, Mr. Reed, ladies and gentlemen.
Because people react differently to alcohol, most professionals prefer to measure alcohol problem by the severity of its consequence, not by measuring daily intake. Penal servitude, the incarceration of a criminal offender, is one of the most severe consequences which can be faced by those who abuse alcohol. While social problems such as employment, welfare, dependency change through the years, the age-old problem of alcohol abuse continues as a constant.
Evidence from interviews with community representatives, organizations and agencies, as well as with offenders themselves, indicates virtual anonymity that alcohol remains the biggest factor in criminal activity. Federal statistics in Canada reflect that 75 to 90 percent of non-Native offenders have an alcohol problem, while 89 to 94 percent of Native offenders abuse alcohol. Overall, between 85 and 90 percent of all offenders have this particular disease.
Given the severity of consequence attributed to the drinking problems faced by so many inmates in Canada's correctional facilities and the high social and economic costs attached to incarceration, it is manifestly impossible for correctional administrators to ignore substance abuse programming. The object of the Correctional Service Canada, as part of the entire criminal justice system, is to exercise safe, secure and humane control of offenders while helping them to become law-abiding citizens.
Our mission is therefore quite clear. In order to meet our objectives, we must help offenders to identify their needs and to develop program opportunities in which they may participate to enhance the possibility of these offenders becoming socially and legally responsible citizens. Saskatchewan Penitentiary is an institution about to celebrate its 75th anniversary. It was built in 1911. There are approximately 500 inmates in the main facility, about 25 percent who are of Native ancestry.
An additional 65 inmates are housed in a super-maximum security facility called a special handling unit, which is a prison within a prison inside the walls. While 150 of the inmates in the main institution are serving life sentences or indeterminate sentences, most of them have violence in their backgrounds. However, the majority of the inmates would be considered to be of a medium security nature.
Only those held in a special handling unit are continuously precluded from total interaction with staff, civilian volunteers or their peers. Alcoholics Anonymous has existed as an active program at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary since May of 1950 when the warden of the day, Warden Everett, and the classification officer invited AA members from Saskatchewan and Alberta to address interested inmates at a public meeting.
With the advice and the assistance of the local AA group members, a small group was formed and regular meetings were held. By April of 1954, the attendance of the weekly meetings was averaging 23 inmates, and the first successful releases were recorded around that time as a result of participation in the AA program. In addition, after approximately four years of operation, the group that was sponsored by the local AA group had a title of its own called NorCal,
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and it was named after two keepers who were very active in the program, very interested in the program. John Norfield, who I believe attended the conference in Louisiana, and a gentleman by the name of Warden Kelly. So they took the person's name and called it the NorCal group. But after four years, they obtained a chartered membership on April 13, 1954. In May of this year, 1985, the Alcoholics Anonymous program at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary celebrated 35 years as an ongoing program.
Nearly 200 inmates are now regular participants in the seven groups that are operating within the institution, and they meet each week. A full-time drug and alcohol abuse counselor is employed and on a contract basis with the Prince Albert Council of Alcohol and Drug Abuse. He is responsible for coordinating the five groups within the main institution as well as one group in the supermaximum special handling unit and another group in a special programming unit, which is an innovative treatment unit, which we just started this year for the treatment of individuals who require extensive psychiatric intervention.
During the May roundup this year, one of the two roundups held annually at the institution, 90 AA members from throughout Canada and the United States participated in open meetings with in excess of 125 inmates. Included in the visiting membership were a dozen former institutional members who had began their years of sobriety at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary. But does the increased participation in the program mean anything?
Do more groups result in a better delivery of service? Can the success of the program be measured by the attendance of outside guests? In short, is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous assisting us to meet our objective? Is our mission being accomplished? The increased participation in Alcoholics Anonymous is quite likely as a result of the change and our process of the management of inmate cases. In the mid-1970s, a case management procedure was implemented whereby the needs of the inmate were to be identified upon admission to the institution.
This involved the counselor from the inside, the case management officer, a parole officer from the community, and the inmate himself, plus any ad hoc members that may have input into the case or may have special interest in it. With such a large percentage of inmates identified as having alcoholic problems, it is appropriate that nearly 40% of the population is involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. As least as many more should also be participating, but somehow they are either being missed in the needs identification process or avoiding participation in the treatment program.
Those experienced with AA will recognize it is a combination of both. Some individuals with alcohol problems, be that they are incarcerated or free citizens, refuse to accept the fact that they are alcoholics. When I mention free citizens, I just wonder who is really free if they are hooked on booze. While others accepting that they might be alcoholics, believe that they can quit drinking on their own and resolve their problems in their own way.
One of the principles accepted by the Correctional Service Canada is that inmates cannot be forced into treatment, be it medical, psychiatric, psychological, dental, medical, or rehabilitative. There have been many correctional models introduced over the years. We have tried the old transportation model, ship them off to Australia. We have the punishment model. We have had the medical model, the rehabilitative model.
And presently in Canada we are using a model that is called the opportunities model. This basically means that we provide the facilities and the programs in which the offender may participate and then provide the environment to encourage him or her to become involved. We understand that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
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However, we can also exercise that horse in the hot sun and encourage him to take part in the water. We believe that we can and do provide this encouragement at our institution. So it would appear that our mission is, at least in part, being accomplished. The needs of the offender are being identified through the case management process, and with a choice of five programs in the main institution for the offender from which to select, it appears that the program opportunities have been developed.
However, do they enhance the possibility of those offenders becoming responsible citizens? Perhaps the words of Chester Cunningham, who Wayne would know quite well, of the Native Counseling Services of Alberta, reflected best. I met Chester recently in the airport in Toronto, and I spoke to him about this program here. And he said, I go by statistics and 23 years of experience. AA has sobered up more Native inmates than any other alcoholic program.
Chester also states, I had high hopes for many of the new programs until I found out that there was too much concentration on the cultural aspects. In addition, any of the new treatment programs for alcoholics eventually falls back on AA. Robert V., an inmate serving a life sentence at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary, says, Before I came to prison, I had a drinking problem, a severe, unmanageable life, and was spiritually sick.
I've been in this institution since April of 1976. I've been in this institution since April of 1977 and have learned a great deal. Over the years, I've learned who I am, and I'm able to recognize my problem in life. By doing the Novalco Step group, I have found that alcohol was only one of my many problems. And I learned that without alcohol, I could deal with these problems more positively. Robert talks about the Novalco Step group.
This approach to Alcoholics Anonymous programming was initiated at Saskatchewan Penitentiary for use in a correctional setting. It is an approach which has resulted in our AA program being apparently much more successful than other institutional programs. In the Novalco program, members are not simply exposed to and encouraged to work the steps, but are taken through them one step at a time at successive weekly meetings.
Sometimes it may take more than one meeting to proceed to that particular step. The Novalco program emphasizes, of course, the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a program to quit drinking, but it is a program of living without alcohol. The hall of sobriety, honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness is fought and hope for an improved future is instilled. Robert continues in his letter, Now I had been around AA before I came to this institution, but somehow it did not have the same attraction this Novalco method had.
The Novalco AA step group has allowed me to change my attitude and to look for the good in people as well as to look for the good in me. I have also become motivated to helping myself in any way I can. I am able to ask for help, as asking for help is a show of strength and not a sign of weakness. Most important, I have turned my life over to God's hands and allow him to change or to manage my life as I had shown that I could not manage it myself or I would not be in prison.
The importance of community involvement can neither be overstated nor understated. The community through Alcoholics Anonymous shares with the correctional services the responsibility for promoting dynamic programs of treatment. The aim is to prepare the inmate to function socially, and this is not realistic if he or she is kept isolated from that same community.
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For the inmate to feel genuinely a part of the community, it is essential that citizens participate in institutional programs. Significant elements of the community life must be a normal part of institutional life, and the participation in outside activities by serving inmates should also be part of an institutional program. Next to the utilization of the Novelco Step Series, it must be considered to be the major reason for the success of our institutional programs.
Each Friday evening, 52 weeks of the year, members of AA groups throughout Saskatchewan attend the institutional meetings. Of course, there is a shared benefit for all participants, but the benefits are not adequately accommodated, as the institutional members are likely to be attending such programs under a conditional release, be it for escorted or unescorted temporary absence or on day parole. It is imperative that the appropriate communication exists between the institution and that group.
The importance of such involvement on the part of our inmates is immeasurable as the offender commences and progresses through the various steps of his gradual release program. Another aspect of the community liaison work is to tap the various community resources, which can provide additional treatment or program reinforcement for the offender once he has returned to the community. This can be involved in ensuring the placement of the offender in a community-based alcohol treatment program on a conditional release after his warrant has expired, or it may simply entail ensuring that contact has been established between the offender and a compatible member of AA in the community to which he has been released.
These contacts can be, and often are, initiated early in the inmate's sentence, resulting in a solid community resource base being established for the offender. Finally, this community liaison work has been utilized to ensure that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is accorded the same credibility as other professional treatment programs. Within Saskatchewan Penitentiary, Alcoholics Anonymous is viewed as the program which will assist offenders not only to get out of prison, but to stay out of prison.
Other institutional treatment programs have not run as long, demonstrated the same success, or been as easily understood. Consequently, when the prison must be closed for security or other administrative reasons, these programs may be canceled. However, when the AA program is likely to be disrupted, every effort is made to ensure that the program proceeds as scheduled. As I mentioned earlier, our AA program runs 52 weeks of the year, and I can only recall on one occasion in my 11 years as warden when we had to cancel an AA meeting in the institution.
This occasion incidentally occurred this calendar year, and the crisis we were experiencing at the time occurred late on a Friday afternoon, and insufficient time was not available to restore the institution to normalcy. But this one cancellation in 575 Friday meeting schedule indicates clearly the responsibility and the credibility established by the members of the AA, and also the commitment of the prison administration to the AA program.
Our alcohol and drug abuse counselor regularly takes the message of the success of AA to the parole officers within the Prairie region, as well as to the parole board. He advocates on behalf of the program and its participants, as well as working to clarify misconceptions held by parole officers and parole board members. His efforts have resulted in a greater understanding of the program and more appropriate decision-making by those in authority.
This same individual has also spread our message to other countries and continents. He is here in the audience today, and having obtained approval from Helen, it gives me great pride to introduce the first employed Native and Alcohol Abuse Counselor in the Correctional Service Canada, Elmer H.
[00:50:21]
Would you please stand, Elmer? This did not come easy, and a lot of political pressure was imposed by some of the local AA community in Prince Albert. It was spearheaded by an individual who is a member of the fraternity called a well-known radio TV broadcaster named J.J. Another individual who was involved in it is another local yokel of Prince Albert, but he is known internationally. I met him when I came in here today, and everybody knows him as Seath.
Come to think of it, we have a lot of people in the Citizens' Advisory Committee at the institution. I'm just beginning to realize that we have nine members of the Citizens' Advisory, and these are the people that bridge the gap between the community and the institution. And recently I discovered five of the nine are members of the AA. So I think they're trying to take over the damn institution. It must be obvious that we believe that Saskatchewan Penitentiary is better able to meet its corporate objectives and fulfill its mission with the assistance of the Alcoholics Anonymous Program.
However, in this period of budget restraint, it is vital to be able to measure the effectiveness of a program by evaluating its results. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to measure the success of the institutional AA program. First and foremost is the difficulty of defining when a participant can be deemed to be a success. Secondly, as former members of the institution group tend to be highly mobile and prefer to sever connections with the institution, the logistics of preparing a truly reflective evaluation are very, very difficult.
I have, however, submitted a report or a request to the Offenders Program at National Headquarters asking for the necessary financial and human resources to complete such an evaluation. Regardless of the lack of statistical support, I am strongly convinced that the need for and the benefits of our institutional AA program, nor the single program, assists us in the resolution of a problem which inhibits so many offenders from becoming law-abiding citizens.
The vast resource base which is readily available and easily accessible for both pre-release and post-release support is likely the most significant pool of community talent available to me as a prison warden. But the AA program is more than just a resource base. As a program which promotes a new way of living, it provides a degree of stability to an environment in which instability can run rampant.
The AA program provides hope for those serving long terms of incarceration. It encourages discipline in those who lack control of their actions, minimizing disruptive activities, and thereby limiting danger to both staff and other inmates. It engenders positive thinking and an increased self-esteem which is carried over into other program activities. Many recommendations have been put forth over the years in relation to this problem.
However, what is needed is a serious commitment by correctional services generally on both sides of the border and in other countries to take action along with community AA organizations before any real progress can be achieved. Both groups must work together in order to successfully cope or manage the situation. Results of the evaluation that I mentioned hopefully will provide the correctional service of Canada the opportunity to provide real leadership in the field.
Once an inmate has accepted his problem and expresses a desire to do something about it, the mechanism must be in place so that he can go about handling it and the support of the people who will carry them through.
[00:55:00]
Staff of the institution must be on board for the program to be successful. In fact, many of the staff, due to the stress of the job of working in corrections, need the program for themselves. Volunteers must be encouraged to come into the institution and prison administrations must be prepared to allow inmates out to participate in the community. As Amos mentioned earlier, because an inmate is in prison doesn't mean that he hasn't access to drink.
We have some of the most ingenious brewmasters locked up. I've seen some of the most potent brews produced in 24 hours. Staff are constantly challenged with searching. When we don't find it, then we're really concerned. We do find it periodically and quite frequently as a matter of fact. Believe me or not, most of the time the concentration is on the holiday season. They want to celebrate Christmas, New Year's, and usually get quite a stash of brew around that time.
Unfortunately, within the prisons, the substance abuse can really have devastating effects. Stabbings, murders, and so forth. The contributing factor in many of these investigations has directed back to substance abuse. Considering the foregoing, it is my firm conviction that Alcoholics Anonymous has been and will continue to be both a stabilizing element within the institution and the program most capable of assisting offenders to become socially and legally responsible citizens.
As I mentioned earlier, I've been the warden now for 11 years and it's made my job damn easy to have AA in the institution. In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate AA on your golden anniversary and wish you the best for the future and at least for the next seven years because that's about the right retirement date. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jim. It was interesting to note that Alcoholics Anonymous was only 15 years old when Saskatchewan established their AA program in prison.
I'm sure that each one of you know that alcohol is the great leveler for all of us and any one of us could have spent time in prison if we didn't. There are some chairs available over here if anybody would like to take advantage of them before we hear our next speaker who is Jim Estelle. Jim is on the board of trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous. He is one of those non-alcoholics who give a lot of time to this recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous and he is a very dedicated servant to Alcoholics Anonymous and we're very fortunate to have him with us and to have him here to speak to you this morning.
I want to introduce Jim Estelle. These two speakers that have shared with us this morning, for those of you who are in any way novices to the field of corrections, criminal justice and the related or the relationship of alcoholism to that group or that discipline, I need to tell this group that these two speakers have as many credentials and experience in corrections as you all do as drunks. And this is a very special group as you know and as you have let me come to know, this is a very special group and so when I was asked to suggest some folks that might talk knowledgeably with you about their views and reactions to the fellowship in the discipline of corrections, I wanted to at least match experience and skill in their discipline that you have in yours.
that you have in yours. Let me ask, just, and I won't ask a question other than this because we don't live on statistics in the fellowship, but I would like to know, how many in this audience were
[01:00:06]
present at Denver at the same meeting? How about that? Thank you. I have a special feeling for those of you that were in Denver because I think that was the first time that I had been invited to address a group of the fellowship beyond my own correctional institutions where I had worked with them for many years, and I was going to brag a little bit. I made a, in fact, I made a special note on a piece of paper, you might have seen me jotting a few things down.
I was going to brag a little bit when I got up here that because in 86 I rotate, and I was pretty well surveying and inventorying the audience, and one thing that I did not see, I did not see one of my AA sponsors in the audience, and I thought they, I've finally arrived. I made it. They've allowed me to come to a meeting without a sponsor, but it didn't happen. Just as Jim O'Sullivan was wrapping up, why, one of my sponsors walked in the room, gave me a baleful glare, found a seat, and he's here, and, oh, shoot.
You know, there are, this is one of the few places in our fellowship, in the discipline of corrections, in the generic field of criminal justice, where people who have either suffered or enjoyed, depending on your point of view, similar and yet very different experiences together, where we can come together and talk about one common denominator, one common goal, one common fear, and one common hope, without rancor, without reservation, without discrimination, without consideration that I may have spent my career doing one thing, some of you have spent part of your career doing something else.
But this is, you know, and I have learned so much and been so privileged by being accepted almost to the point where, you know, and I think you sense, I have no fear of any of you anymore. And I'm grateful for that. But that's about the time someone like me should rotate. And so I'm beginning maybe to understand another lesson you've shared with me. We wanted you to have access, though, to at least two people who have had and are going to continue to have an impact on the fellowship, not only in their own institutions, but because of the respect that these two speakers are held and the esteem in which they're held by their colleagues.
They will continue to have an impact on the fellowship's opportunities in institutions, not only in Canada and the United States, but throughout the world. The fellowship as it's known in institutions is a program where everybody wins. And I don't have to tell you anymore. I needed to be reminded for a number of years why you win. You know, I was like the convicts. What's in it for you? You know, what are you doing here?
You know, there's an occupational hazard that we, and I still stumble into that possessive pronoun from time to time because I had a midlife career change about 18 months ago and I'm not used to it yet. We in corrections, we can get almost as paranoid as some of the convicts that we know are paranoid.
[01:05:01]
And there were many years when I wondered, what are you doing here in my prison? I don't ask that question anymore. And because I think I have some semblance of understanding of what you're doing in our prisons. And I don't see it as an act of charity on your part anymore. Because if you're not there, you're increasing the probability that you won't be sober tomorrow. And the fact that you are there gives me great hope, not only that you're going to continue to be sober tomorrow, but you're going to show somebody in my prison that they also can be sober with you tomorrow and enjoy the, and have the joy and the maturity of sobriety that you have obviously achieved.
You know, everybody wins. These administrators have already admitted before you and the rest of the world several times, even before they came to this meeting with us, that the prison administrators and the prison workers and the correctional officers are better off because they have better adjusted, better behaved inmates. And it's purely and simply that, as far as many of them are concerned. And they don't need to go beyond that to establish a value for the fellowship being in their prison.
And we don't need to expect any more than that, because we've already got what we came after and that's our continued sobriety. The taxpayers, obviously, winners. And that includes everybody in this room. Sometimes we forget, you know, as we talk about ourselves as alcoholics, non-alcoholics, correctional workers, inmate clientele or whatever, but we're all taxpayers. As are all of our neighbors, whether they have any recognition or realization that alcoholism costs us tremendously, tremendously, not only financially, but in human resources.
And we're, none of us, capable of calculating the loss of human resources that alcoholism unchecked and untreated costs us. So the taxpayers also win. We know in the fellowship that there are a few basics. The blocking and tackling, as it were, of our game plan. Don't drink. Go to meetings. Keep coming back. Within some degree of certainty, if you can keep on doing those things, why, you know that you somehow will survive sober.
But there's another basic that brings all of those things together and has meaning particularly for you folks who understand the foundation of service, the foundation of service within the fellowship. And that's the old axiom that you have to give it away to keep it. And there are a bunch of you in this room who, and none of you came to this understanding the same way. Every one of you exercised your individual autonomy in arriving at the same conclusion that you have to give it away to keep it.
But more than that, each one of you in exercising your individual autonomy, you found the group that needs it most or needs it worst or is suffering the greatest and who lacks the attention. Because there are great numbers of people for a lot of different reasons that cannot bring themselves to go to jail to carry the message or go into a prison to carry the message or to take a parolee and be a parolee or a probationer sponsor.
That's too heavy a load. That's too heavy a load. And there are a bunch of you in here that, thank God, have found it not only that for you it is not too heavy a load, but you found it as probably your way to continued sobriety. Some of you that have heard me speak recently know that I'm going to get on a little bit
[01:10:04]
of a soapbox with you this morning. And I can't help it because officially I've only got, you know, about eight months left where I can get on a soapbox with you. After that I'm back to emptying ashtrays and making coffee. I mentioned that foundation of service, you've got to give it away to keep it. Now are you only going to give it away when somebody asks for it? That's what some folks say, you know, unless that fellow comes crawling on his hands and knees and he's falling down low-bottom drunk.
We can't help him unless he comes to us and asks for it. Times they are a-changing, and I'm not the one who invented that phrase. Twenty, thirty years ago some song singer told us that, and he was right. Times they are a-changing. And the fellowship, even with all of its universal, inalterable, immutable truths, we have also changed. Now some of us don't like to admit that we're, you know, we're going to change just that much, but we have, we've changed about that much.
Only when someone asks are we going to give help, no. Because we've already shown that we're going to respond when somebody indirectly has asked us to help someone else. When that judge sends you a probationer or an alternative to jail and says, I want you to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and I want somebody over there to sign their initial, a little card, and some of us got really outrageous, you know.
And we forgot, some of us forgot that our wife told us, you better get over to Alcoholics Anonymous or I'll see you in court. Some of us forgot we had an employer who said, if you want to get a paycheck next month, or ma'am, you better show up at the next AA meeting, because there won't be a paycheck for you unless that happens. Some of us kind of forgot that, and we got all outrageous when some court, some judge up there who has recognized what you have known individually and collectively, you have known since you got sober, and some judge recognizes what you found, and we get a little bit paranoid about it.
Let's not forget, somebody shared, somebody indirectly helped most of us. We didn't just accidentally stumble up the stairs into our first AA meeting. And thank God that there are some non-alcoholic courts who understand what you all have found, and they want some of the people in their courtroom to find and share what you have found too. And I don't think that's unreasonable, especially when you consider that I spent 32 years of my life and these fellows have spent as long of their life picking up the pieces of people who didn't find their way to AA before they had to go to prison.
And you and I paid the bill. You and I paid the bill. And hardly blinked an eye. Some of us discovered that our life was unmanageable. Every once in a while somebody had that light bulb go on and there was a revelation that our life was unmanageable. It doesn't happen very often, but you've heard stories, I'm sure I have, that it happened. With a bunch of us it was just sheer grinding, wrenching, frustration, day after day after day of frustration, almost to the point where you're afraid you're going to die and scared to death you're not.
And that got us into the fellowship, and some of us forget how we got here. Some of us forget how we got here. Now, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I've got to get the choir But I got to get the choir to go out in Montreal and back in Ohio and New Jersey and Washington and even Texas. I got to get you choir members to go back and sing back there where you come from.
[01:15:06]
And so if you say, well, what's he telling me now? I'm not telling you anything that you don't know already. I just want to reinforce what you know already so you'll go back and do the good things that you have already started to do. Because we need people who will go to lunch with a warden or who will discuss intelligently and fearlessly with a secretary of corrections, who will go talk to a probation officer about the ungodly workload that he has got.
He can't even, a probation officer in most communities, they can't even count the cases every month, let alone serve the cases every month that need service. The parole officer who's got over half of his caseload teeter in between relapse into alcoholism and the subsequent return to prison and trying to protect you from the violence that the other half of his caseload represents. You represent hope, not only to the alcoholic probationer and parolee, you represent hope to that civil servant that's trying to protect you.
And thank God you've been there, else these fellows would have probably retired when I did. And everybody wants to, you know, everybody gets excited now, and we need to talk about this a little bit because there's something I think in the book that says about how we meet our own needs. And this is no place that you and I are involved in, this is no place for us to be meeting our own needs other than staying sober.
Other than staying sober, and that's perfectly legitimate and we all recognize that. But it's no place to be playing games because there are people's lives at stake. Directly and indirectly, people's lives are at stake. And it's no place to look for the dramatic or look for the exciting because there isn't but very, very little dramatic and exciting other than the saving of one person from continued suffering and finding the joy of sobriety.
That's always exciting. But be careful when you take your own inventory as you get into this work about whose needs you are serving first. And I think the fact that most of you have reached a level that I refer to as finding your maturity and sobriety else you wouldn't be able to survive in the kind of service work you're in. You're probably not meeting your own needs to the degree that you're meeting other people's needs.
And that's a test of maturity and your sobriety when you're meeting other people's needs more frequently than meeting your own. I also refer to that as tithing in your sobriety. You've found a way to tie your sobriety with others. And when I get to the point where I would almost rather cry out of joy for what you have shared with me, but more importantly what you have shared with the severely suffering alcoholic in your jails and prisons, why then it's time for me to rotate and show my gratitude to the fellowship in some other ways that I hope you'll permit me to do.
Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Now you know why we in Alcoholics Anonymous, and especially at the General Service Board, feel so indebted to Jim for his almost nine years of service. And we are certainly going to miss him when he rotates as we miss all of our non-alcoholic trustees when they rotate. But we always seem to be very fortunate in this fellowship to find people who will step into the job and try to replace them and give up that dedicated service to this fellowship.
Those people who have not suffered our illness but who are willing to share in our recovery are very dear to us.
[01:20:02]
Jim mentioned rotation, and as an alcoholic trustee, I rotate after four years. The non-alcoholic trustees can serve for nine years. That just shows us that it takes them a little longer. I want to once again thank our guests this morning for coming and giving up their time to share with us. These are our people who lead very busy lives. And we are so fortunate that people like Amos and Reed and Jim O'Sullivan and Jim Estelle will take time out of their busy lives to come here and share their experience, strength, and hope with us.
And I ask you once again to please thank them on our behalf. While we are all standing, we will end this meeting with the Lord's Prayer.