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In the Name of God, The Merciful, the Compassionate
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND ISLAM
PARTNERS IN PRISON REFORM
Sayid Muhammad-Muhsin Jalali-Tehrani, Ph.D.
Founder, Islamic Association for Humanistic Psychology
Mashhad Security and Corrections Facility
Counseling and Mental Health Center
Freeing the prisoner
- The person who commits a crime is out of touch with himself, in a state of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal conflict.
- Being in touch with the transpersonal helps the individual tap into a wealth of wisdom and guidance and achieve natural health and harmony.
- Corrections facilities owe it to the community to do more than detain or penalize prisoners until their release.
- The well-functioning corrections facility prepares the individual to return to live in harmony within the community.
Laying the groundwork
- The human being does not exist separately from the environment.
- The prison that rehabilitates inmates is the one whose environment is therapeutic.
- Personnel were carefully chosen for their ability to show positive regard and respect to the inmates.
- Prison security and management staff are an integral part of the environment and need support also.
- The milieu must free all aspects of the total human being, physical, economic, social, cognitive, psychological, and open the way to the spiritual.
PHYSICAL health energizes integration
- Total health and integration require a healthy body to provide energy for motivation, and the endurance to undergo the stress of change.
- Modern indoor exercise facilities are available, as well as open air courts for calisthenics and body building.
- Organized sports such as modern and traditional wrestling help channel physical energy and strength in positive ways.
- Nutritional consultants help devise menus tailored to meet psychological profiles.
- Complete medical services are available at the prison to cover health needs. An outpatient clinic, radiology center, psychiatric services, laboratory, and dental care comprise the full service health program.
- Regular weekly access to a physician allows inmates to discuss physical concerns.
ECONOMIC stability is essential for reintegration in the community.
- Economic needs, real or exaggerated, are an undeniable force in crime.
- Self-insight gained through therapy helps inmates recognize the false values and inflated importance assigned to wealth, and to the status and prestige it seems to promise.
- Inmates understand that there are no instant solutions to financial difficulties, and learn to weigh material success against more enduring values.
- Careful emphasis is given, however, to job training skills to enable each inmate to provide for himself and family upon release.
- Plans are underway to assist in job placement skills and help inmates reenter the work force.
SOCIAL relations rebuild interpersonal harmony
- Distance from family members, concern for their welfare, and can be a source of pain for inmates.
- Special areas have been built inside the prison and on prison grounds to allow for family visits.
- Facilities for conjugal visits are provided as well as areas in which families with children can visit in a relaxed, informal atmosphere.
- Financial support, drawn from the private sector, is extended to needy families.
- Social interaction within the prison helps inmate relearn how to build and maintain interpersonal relations.
- Project personnel serve as role models, interacting in a respectful, genuine way.
- Socialization between inmates is encouraged. A dayroom is provided where inmates can gather, discuss issues important to them, take meals together, and engage in simple recreational activities.
- Assertion without hostility, expression of feelings, understanding, and patience are some of the social skills stressed in the program.
- Leave from prison grounds from one to ten days is granted to qualified inmates, giving them a chance to reintegrate gradually into their social group.
COGNITIVE insights integrate understanding
- Self-defeating behaviors are often the result of irrational thoughts.
- The person who commits a crime has long been recognized as one who lacks insight into everyday coping skills and tends to react impulsively, rather than through rational deliberation.
- Our specially devised cognitive therapy for inmates helps individuals gain self- understanding and self-control. Coping skills to deal with depression, anger, unrealistic perfectionism, and inappropriate expectations of others allow inmates a chance for greater choice in their behavior.
- Lectures and discussion groups help inmates probe their concept of self and learn alternative ways to solve problems. Formal and informal question and answer periods bring lessons to a personal level.
- An extensive library is available to hone intellectual capacities and increase the inmate’s general knowledge base.
PSYCHOLOGICAL health relies on personality integration.
- Integration therapy serves support individual growth and harmony.
- Prisoners undergo multi-faceted therapeutic experiences, allowing them to release tensions and uncover blocks; naturally, this allows them to come closer to the spiritual and transpersonal aspects of their experience.
- Individual, group, family, and milieu therapy are provided through the on-site Counseling and Mental Health Center.
- Center personnel act as advocates for both inmates and staff; this ensures that the full scope of human needs receives appropriate consideration.
- Results after one year show that inmates receiving psychological services have significant reduction in insecurity, anxiety, suicidal depression, paranoia, suspicion and resentment, feelings of psychological inadequacy and schizophrenic tendencies.
SPIRITUAL integration coordinates the whole person.
- Integration implies the coordination of an entire system around one goal. Worship is precisely this: an orientation toward an all-inclusive goal.
- Religious values impart a sense of meaning and direction in life. A religious perspective strings a thread of meaning and purpose through the fragmentary and paradoxical elements of life.
- Only a genuine religious orientation yields positive effects upon the personality. A genuine religious orientation is lived, never used; it is adopted by inner choice, not outer inducement.
- Prayer, devotion, meditation, and discussions are valuable parts of each day. They form genuine links to the transpersonal.
COMMENTS and feedback from staff and inmates
- Statistics have shown significant changes in pathology indicators among members of the program. Perhaps even more encouraging, however, are the personal remarks of the inmates and staff we serve.
- Inmates: "I see my future as bright. I have found self-confidence. Before, life was meaningless, but now I have found meaning in life."
- "I used to become angry and violent easily. Now I believe that troubles and difficulties are part of life. I see them as a challenge. I can form relationships with others more easily. No one is perfect."
- "By treating me as a valuable human being, the personnel helped me rediscover my own value as a human being. This has had great meaning for me."
- One of the inmates, currently in our half-way house program commented, "Maybe I can’t afford to live like I used to. But I have found something in this program that means more to me than those things.
- Staff: This program has changed me as a warden. I used to see prisoners as offenders, now I see them as human beings."
- "I used to have a lot of anger and hostility as a warden. Now I find I am able to be patient, even when inmates are offensive. I don’t react immediately. I stop and think."
EPILOGUE
Our program now serves over 700 inmates. Many have been released and continue to come to group meetings voluntarily. Others are in halfway houses served by the program. As I try to grasp the details by which I can explain our program, to outline the reasons for its success, I find that the reasons disappear into vignettes of interactions, of meaningful moments, of trust, challenges, risks. How can I explain what has happened here? Perhaps I can best sum up matters genuinely by saying, now, as ever before, I believe in miracles.
The Website of Sayid Muhammad-Muhsin Jalali-Tehrani, Ph.D
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