Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Therapeutic value.
As I understand it, the lead social worker in charge of the latest rehabilitative project has learned from previous experiments where the goal was to get inmates to express themselves. Since group sessions resulted in a staggering rise in the number of infirmary patients and the severe emotional damage which made the last lead social worker quit to pursue a career in squirrel farming, she seems to have decided that private, wholly personal expression is better than no expression at all.
She’s handed out free journals to all inmates. Those with good behaviour records get to have a pen, the others have to go to the library to use one of the chained pens. Since I’m new, she had a conversation with me and I asked if I could have some extra computer privileges instead of the journal, so I could write my thoughts online.
She was immediately enthusiastic, mainly, I think, because she’s begun to suspect that the only reason most of the other inmates are interested in writing is because they want to cash in on the prison memoirs fad from a few years ago and hope that by the time they get out, those memoirs’ll be back in fashion again and they can publish their story for squillions of dollars. Me, I just want to give a shout out to all my homeys, although, since I don’t yet know the degree of surveillance they’ve got me under, I don’t want to risk much more than I’m doing.
So nobody I know, probably, is reading this because I can’t send you emails, and you haven’t visited me yet.
