Looking for the Answers
5-31-00
Dear Kay Lee
Mr. Crossley suggested that I write you. I was wondering if DOC has regulations pertaining to relatives working together on the same camp. In the type of gov. work that I did there sure were no relatives working with each other.
I hear that they are making a camp for inmates 50 years old or older. Have you heard anything about it? [River Junction]
Ms B. Kelly is trying to get a program started in Pinellas County Jail called Changing Criminal Thoughts. Could I get you to write her and ask for more information on it? It is a program that really works if the criminal wants to change. She has devoted her whole life to helping the inmates. I think you and her could really help each other and us. I've tried to start a class here but as you know, they have been doing nearly the same things for the last 150 years. Here at Union CI we have no schooling and at this time, we don't have Arts & Crafts.
Sincerely
Pop Davis
6-30-00
Ms Kay Lee
The custom stationary is something for me to do while Arts & Crafts is shut down for a while. When I do get to go to class, I make fishing poles. I make fly rods and other poles up to the thousand pound class.
I fell in 1995. I am now 57 years old and had never been in trouble before except for a DUI. I worked for all the major aircraft and space industries. In 1991, the doctors made me quit work and retire after having open heart surgery, which consisted of 5 by-passes. Shortly after the heart surgery, I had a stroke. I've gotten everything back from the stroke except my short term memory.
After about two years of retirement is when I fell. After retiring, I started to drink like a fish. People told me that drinking was what got me in here. I lived with that excuse for about 1 1/2 years and then I started reading, trying to find out who and what I was. With the help of Ms. Kelly and the CCT Program, I started to learn (Changing Criminal Thoughts). The class was taught by Ms Kelly at the Pinellas County Jail. I have been studying the criminal Personality, Vol. I, I, and III, by Doctors Samuel Yochelson and Stanton E. Samenow for four years now. They did a fifteen year study and over 300,000 pages of notes on the criminal personality. Most of their work was done in Washington, D.C. at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. Doctor Samenow, PhD, was on the advisory committee on criminals to the President of the United States..
The two doctors have pointed out that we as a society know very little about the criminal and how he thinks. We have been doing the basic same things dealing with the criminal for the past 150 years, getting the same results.
To embark on a program that is truly corrective, we must begin with the clear understanding that the criminal chooses crime. He chooses his associates, his way of life, the kinds of crime he commits. He rejects society long before society rejects him; he is victimizer, not victim. The criminal values people to the extent that they can be manipulated. He believes he is entitled to whatever he desires; he does not justify his actions to himself.
The present reform programs, which have given hardened criminals social and vocational skills without coming to grips with the way they view the world, are costly, useless, dangerous. It is vital that we know who the criminal is and how and why he acts differently from responsible citizens. From that understanding can come reasonable, compassionate, and effective solutions.
The other day, I asked my Ph Specialist if they knew the 52 character defects the criminal has and they said they didn't know all of them. My question was, how could a person try and direct a person's life when they don't know all that could be wrong?
Based on the results of more than a decade of study of criminal behavior and the extensive experience of clinical psychologist, Dr. Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind redefines what motivates criminals and explains what must be done to deal with them effectively.
The simple fact, Dr. Samenow argues, is that the criminal's way of thinking is vastly different from that of a responsible citizen. If you don't know who you are dealing with, how can you do any good at helping these people while they are in prison? A responsible person will take advise etc, where the criminal does the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
We have people in positions that are calling the shots who are not educated in the way a criminal thinks. After 150 years of failing, it is time to rethink what human beings are doing to human beings.
I wonder how many criminals we have calling the shots?
Have you heard anything on Arts and Crafts.
Dennis W. Davis
165787 D-56
Union "Correctional" Institution
P.O. Box 221
Raiford, Florida 32083-0221