CURRAN RESPONDS

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I would like to offer some clarification on the comments concerning the special offender project I was involved in according to the story in The Crimson of January 23.

First, we do not recommend "experimental" drug programs for "control" of violent behavior, either in current prisons, or in any new facility.

The entire thrust of our study of drug medication in the prisons of the six states was to suggest improved medical drug medication with, for example, better diagnosis, better follow-up of side-effects, and checking to see that prescribed drugs are actually taken. A reading only of our summary statement could be misunderstood on this point. We wish to correct that impression and stop the distorted, emotional response to the whole idea of "drug therapy."

Second, it should be understood that the study, a gathering of statistics on violence and the characteristics of these violent, disruptive inmates. We were asked to review a proposal for a six-state, New England-wide institution for special offenders. We did not recommend this. We suggested a much more modest proposal for a northern-New England, small center in cooperation with a new Federal Bureau of Prisons unit which would include many other programs. The reason for suggesting this in the north is because New Hampshire and Vermont are moving to construct new maximum security facilities to replace their old, obsolete prisons. This new program could be a vast improvement over current conditions and would deal only with selected violent offenders, not for all "troublemakers" of all kinds. A useful model suggested in the report for this approach we found at the small security treatment center at Middletown, Connecticut where staff-inmate ratio is high, treatment programs are developed before inmates are admitted, the size is small, and there is no prison-like atmosphere.

No single unit is suggested for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut which contain the great bulk of all special offenders.

It is true that as community programs are developed, as the population of the maximum security prisons are reduced, the remainder is a hard core of inmates needing high security. We are now in need of new programs, new methods to deal with these inmates more humanely and without repressive methods. The report specifically recommends extensive civil rights safeguards and recommends against use of confinement and punishment as an answer to these problems.

We are very disturbed about the distortion of the aims and purposes of the study and the emotional response to the use of words like drug therapy and special programs for violent offenders.

The efforts in this study are an unpopular cuase, but we must be involved in many unpopular causes. We must deal with violence in the prisons if we are to make progress in prison reform. We cannot greet every effort to deal directly with violent behavior with emotional attacks. We cannot be against all efforts to change things in the prison system. We are advocating change, change which recognizes and deals with these serious problems in the current system of correction. William J. Curran, J.D., S.M. Hyg.