This is Dortell Williams with a prisoner’s perspective called “Anger, but No Management”.
The subject of prison and the many elements that batter America’s penal system are complex. Parole, recidivism and rehabilitation are just a few of the mind-boggling issues that seem to have our political leadership in a stuporous quagmire as these perplexities steadily worsen. Meanwhile, sporadic violence raised by the few, injure, oppress and taint everyone else confined, involved or not.
When I was plunked into the system some 18 years ago, having been instantly converted from a tax-paying citizen to an idle and misbegotten convict, I expected anger management to be a given? Not that a drug dealer with no history of anger tendencies would need such tempering, but considering the combustible nature and consternation of long-term, crowded, and chaos laden environment, anger management or guidance on how to live peaceably with others in an inherently stressful environment should be a first, and even mandated as part of the program, especially when experts say imprisonment is one of the top five stressful experiences in life.
What makes this particularly interesting is that the National Institute on Mental Health released findings of a study that showed fits of madness go deeper than first imagined. They’re in our genes. According to the study, which involved a face-to-face survey of nearly 10,000 U.S. adults from 2001 to 2003, intermittent explosive disorder, or IAB, is apparently inherited and affects an estimated 16 million Americans, or one in 20 people. IAB is defined as experiencing multiple outbursts that are way out of proportion to the situation. Not withstanding results of the study, it seems logical that a bunch of hurted, deprived, and frustrated men who’ve basically lost at life would be inclined to bouts of anger. In fact, each and every incarcerated convict so entombed is a byproduct of the larger society, and considering the dynamic of testosterone, men are obviously more apt to suffer from IAB than women. Road rage, spousal abuse, throwing tantrums and other aggressive behaviors are considered some of the telltale signs of IAD–crimes, for which a good portion of prisoners are locked away.
Antidepressants and/or anger management are hailed as the elixirs. Now here’s the clincher: after decades of hands-on training with inmates, close and constant supervision of prisoners, and a near perfect public relations spin campaign casting prisoners as “the worst of the worst,” you’d think the corrections community would demand anger management in its regimen, if only for the safety of its own. But no. So, as the sporadic but unnecessary violence rages on in these confined hellholes, society needs to ask what our model of corrections is really all about, and what product our prisons are mass producing for inevitable release. Tough on crime policies are good for politicians trying to sell themselves on the stump, but what’s good for society goes much deeper than merely warehousing our most vulnerable citizens. With a prisoner’s perspective, this is Dortell Williams. To hear more about how wayward prison policies harm society, visit prisonradio.org.
These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan and Mary Bishop.
