A Simple and Effective Cure for Criminality: A Psychological Detective Story (by Reg Reynolds and Douglas Quirk)

The Ontario Correctional Institute (OCI), a modern 220-bed medium security prison opened in late 1973. The OCI’s inmate population was composed primarily of alcoholics, drug addicts, and sex offenders, all of whom were serving “provincial” sentences. In Ontario, that means that their maximum imposed sentence was two years less a day plus any additional probation time which may have been imposed at the time of sentencing. Few of these inmates were considered to be “career criminals,” although a majority of them were recidivists at the time of their admission to the OCI, with significant numbers exhibiting long histories of criminal involvements of many types.

The OCI’s mission statement committed its staff to assessment, treatment, training, safe confinement of adult male incarcerated offenders, and research. These were excellent goals, but:

1. even in the beginning, the OCI’s funding was well below that of a mental health facility of comparable size.

2. since pursuing its ambitious mandate was more expensive than incarceration alone, it wasn’t long before its goals began to be eroded in the interest of saving money. The first to go was research funding.

Nevertheless, several of the psychology staff had particular interests in both treatment and research and continued to pursue these interests until cost-saving overcame any more lofty endeavours than incarceration.

To be continued