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When “More” of a Program is Not Necessarily Better: Drug Prevention in the Sharon Prison*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Efrat Shoham ,
Lior Gideon ,
David L. Weisburd  and
Yossi Vilner
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Abstract

This study examines outcomes from the first prison-based therapeutic community, for drug addicted offenders, implemented at the Sharon prison during 1994–1997. The article describes the program that took place and the process of treatment experienced by those who participated in the program. Using a Cox Proportional Hazard Regression Model (CPHRM) to calculate Hazard of Recidivism, a sample of 421 offenders who participated in the program was analyzed to evaluate program outcomes, while indicating factors that increase/decrease hazard of recidivism. Our findings from the CPHRM revealed that length of time in the program is one of the strongest predictors of hazard of recidivism. However, different from other studies which argue that “the more the better,” findings from this study question such an assumption. Additionally, findings from the above multivariate analysis suggest that criminal history (i.e. age on set, and number of prior arrests), significantly increase hazards of recidivism. Results of the study are discussed in regard to the increase in prison population, expected benefits of treating incarcerated offenders, and the legal aspects of prisoners' rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 105 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2006

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Footnotes

**

Efrat Shoham, Senior Lecturer, Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon. Lior Gideon, Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York. David L. Weisburd, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, The Institute of Criminology, Law Faculty, The Hebrew University. Yossi Vilner, Supervisor, The Prisoners Rehabilitation Authority, Jerusalem.

References

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23 Three different types of barracks were available to prisoners who entered Sharon Prison detoxification, “LEV”, which is the Hebrew acronym for “get clean while incarcerated,” “MSHAL,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “addicts who want to live”, and “NES,” which is the Hebrew acronym for “free of drugs.”

24 This ward was also used as a punishment ward, for prisoners who tested positive while in treatment, and thus were referred to it until a decision in their case was made. Often this was the prisoner last chance to prove his intentions to stick with the program, and abstain from drug use, if failed within this ward the result meant usually transferring to another facility.

25 De Facto, there were eight wards were as the eight's ward was assigned to prisoners that needed protection. After a while this ward was closed due to the nature of the prison (i.e. therapeutic community).

26 While conducting the interviews with prison staff that were involved in the Sharon Program, it was interesting to see that they tend to use medical terminology to describe the process, while perceiving the prisoner not as an offender but more as a sick person who needs to be taken care of, or a victim.

27 For a further, more detailed, description of the Sharon Center for Detoxification and Rehabilitation see Gideon, Lior, Detoxification and Rehabilitation programs in Prison and Social Support Networks in the Community: Their Contribution to Reducing Recidivism and future use of Drugs Among Released Prisoners, (2002) (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, The Hebrew University)Google Scholar (on file with author) [in Hebrew]; Weisburd, et al., 2005, supra note 7.

28 “Wider Study” refers to Weisburd, et al., id.

29 For few of the subjects a time period of more then six years had past since their release from the Sharon prison to the point of data collection for this study.

30 The IPRA is an authority operating under state law and is abide to meet with each prisoner about three month before the end of two thirds of its sentence; hence data on prisoners is documented either by prison or by region for future follow-up; See The Israeli Prisoners Rehabilitation Authority, Final Report for 1999: Quantitative Data on_the Work of the Prisoners Rehabilitation Authority and Social Services Departments (2000) [in Hebrew]Google Scholar.

31 The ultimate goal of any therapeutic community is to bring change into the lifestyle of its participants. In the case of this study a reduction in any criminal involvement. Saying the above, about 30 percent of the subjects who were reincarcerated did so due to drug related offenses (N=62), while another 87 were reincarcerated due to property related crimes, about 43% (For further distribution of offenses after release from the Sharon see Gideon, supra note 27, at 100-108)

32 See SPSS Inc., SPSS Advanced Models 9.0 75–76 (1999)Google Scholar.

33 It is important to note that the average length of incarceration of inmates in our study was 44.41 months, which is about 3.7 years with a median of 39 months, which is about 3.3 years.

These numbers reflect about 50% of all inmates in Israeli prisons; this information is available at http://www.ips.gov.il/Data/data.asp (last visited Feb. 17, 2006). Consequently, it will be wrong to conclude that inmates in our study were, in any way, more serious offenders, just because they spent longer periods of time in treatment. The two are not necessarily correlated in this study.

34 Weisburd, et al., supra note 7.

35 See Weisburd, Shoham, & Gideon, supra note 8; Gideon, supra note 27.

36 See Gideon, id., at interviewee # 23, age 40 (translation L.G.).

37 See, e.g., Miller, William R., Benefield, R. Gayle & Tonigan, J. Scott, Enhancing Motivation for Change in Problem Drinking: a Controlled Comparison of Two Therapist Styles, 61 (3) J. Consulting & Clinical Psychology 455 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson-Zlupko, Lani, Dore, Martha Morrison, Kauffman, Eda, & Kaltenbach, Karol, Women in Recovery: Their Perceptions of Treatment Effectiveness, 13(1) J. Substance Abuse Treat. 51 (1996)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

38 Martin, et al., 1999, supra note 21.

39 See Weisburd, Shoham, & Gideon, supra note 8; Gideon, supra note 27.

40 See Gideon, id., at interviewee #33, age 36 (translation L.G.).

41 Id.

42 See Wozner, supra note 20.

43 See Wexler et. al, supra note 21.

44 See Wozner, supra note 20.

45 See Gideon, supra note 27.

46 See Weisburd, et al., supra note 7.

47 Id.

48 Duke, Karen, Evidence-Based Policy Making? The Interplay Between Research and the Development of Prison Drugs Policy, 1(3) Crim. Just. 277 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.