Breaking news: Psychology-torture protest rally in S.F.

Breaking news on the issue of psychologists and torture is available online:

At PsychCentral, the article "Psychologists Continue to Debate Torture Policies" provides a detailed roster of the speakers at this afternoon’s protest rally outside the American Psychological Association convention in San Francisco.

Democracy Now, which has been covering this controversy for some time now, features an audio (mp3) interview with two psychologists advocating for a ban on psychologists’ participation in interrogations. The two are Steven Reisner of NYU Medical School and a faculty advisor at the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University, and Stephen Soldz of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (who also blogs about this controversy).

Your jail is also your mental health center

This statement shouldn't be news for any of my regular readers. But you might want to know that it's the topic of an article in the new issue of Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, available online for a fee. The article, "Traumatized Offenders: Don't Look Now, But Your Jail's Also Your Mental Health Center," is co-authored by Philip Kinsler, Ph.D., of Dartmouth Medical School and Anna Saxman, JD, of the Office of the Defender General in Montpelier, Vermont.

Here's the abstract:

There are more than a million prison and jail inmates in the United States who have mental illness. As funding for State Hospitals has decreased, funding for needed community programs has often not kept pace. This has led to a population of homeless mentally ill, many of whom have co-occurring substance use disorders. Society's perhaps unconscious response has been to create 24-hour mental health units within prisons and jails. The authors contend that by doing so, we have 're-criminalized' mental illness. The mentally ill prisoner is most often the victim of extreme family turmoil including physical and/or sexual abuse, parental substance dependence, and parental incarceration. Prisons and jails most often do not provide services for this highly traumatized population or recognize the need for such services. The authors report on problematic aspects of mental health care in prisons, and on several attempts to establish 'trauma-aware' care within the legal system.

The latest news and exposes on incarceration

From Boston Review, an insightful report by Glenn Loury that's the talk of the blogosphere this week:

"Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? Race and the Transformation of Criminal Justice"

From Nation magazine's Aug. 27 (upcoming) issue, an excellent overview of the politics of imprisonment:

How can you tell when a democracy is dead? When concentration camps spring up and everyone shivers in fear? Or is it when concentration camps spring up and no one shivers in fear because everyone knows they're not for "people like us" (in Woody Allen's marvelous phrase) but for the others, the troublemakers, the ones you can tell are guilty merely by the color of their skin, the shape of their nose or their social class?

And from Business Day across the Atlantic in Johannesburg, South Africa, a depressing analysis of that country’s prison system, which closely parallels our own.

Community court set to open in San Francisco

Drug courts. Mental health courts. Juvenile courts.

All are part of a quiet movement of "problem-solving justice" that is sweeping the country, its aim to stop the revolving-door cycle of the criminal justice system.

In the latest development, San Francisco's new "Community Court" is set to start trial operations as early as next month. The court's goal is to consider the problems that led defendants into crime and provide services that can help lead them out. It is modeled on a similar court in downtown New York.

The Community Justice Center will focus on misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, such as drug crimes, car break-ins, shoplifting, and check kiting. In response to initial opposition from homeless advocates who were concerned that the new court might inadvertently criminalize people just for being poor, the court will not handle public nuisance infractions such as public urination and public drunkenness.

Journalist Bernice Yeung's opinion piece on the new Community Justice Center is available online. Ongoing news coverage is online at the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site.

The social costs of Zero Tolerance in the schools

APA convention preview

I recently came across an article stating that the public schools in New Orleans are now spending $20 million a year on private security at 22 schools. That's almost $1 million per school, up from about $23,000 per school back in the pre-Katrina day.

The social cost of such heightened school security – and in particular the "Zero Tolerance" policies – is the topic of a symposium at this weekend's American Psychological Association conference in San Francisco.

Research by the APA's Zero Tolerance Task Force found that discipline can actually increase bad behavior and school dropout rates. Punitive school policies also funnel racial and ethnic minority children directly from the school system into – you guessed it – the juvenile justice system.

The one-size-fits-all policies of the Zero Tolerance programs do not consider children’s lapses in judgment or developmental immaturity as a normal aspect of development, according to one of the researchers, Cecil Reynolds of Texas A&M University.

The seminar is at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 19. A list of the luminaries at this seminar is available online.

Photo credit: contraceptacon (Creative Commons license)

APA set to condemn torture

Mock executions, sexual and religious humiliation, dog attacks, induced hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and threats to kill family members.

These are among the controversial government practices that psychologists will no longer be allowed to participate in, under a resolution to be unveiled at next weekend's convention of the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest organization of psychologists.

Psychologists are the last medical professionals still willing to assist U.S. government interrogators at Guantanamo and elsewhere. The American Medical Association, The World Medical Association, and the American Psychiatric Association have all declared that their members have no business consulting in individual interrogations at such detention sites.

The issue is causing considerable acrimony within the 148,000-member APA. Many psychologists think the resolution does not go far enough. They will be lobbying at this weekend's conference for an explicit ban on psychologists in the interrogation rooms.

Psychologists' key role in developing brutal interrogation techniques for the CIA and the military has been the topic of several media exposes. Salon magazine, which has provided continuing coverage of this issue, has an excellent overview today.

"Psychologists have been involved one way or another in supporting the CIA in various forms of psychological torture for years," the article quotes Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, as saying. "The issue is coming to a head because there are so many people within the profession who really feel that the whole integrity of the profession is at stake."

The proposed resolution is timely. It comes on the heels of a White House announcement that it may call on psychologists to participate in a revamped interrogation program. On July 20, President Bush signed an executive order resuming "a coercive CIA interrogation program at the agency's 'black sites,' " according to the Salon article. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence says psychological techniques will be part of the program, but that they will be subject to careful medical oversight - oversight provided by none other than psychologists.

The schedule for APA's special mini-convention, "Ethics and Interrogations: Confronting the Challenge," is available online.

The New Yorker magazine, Vanity Fair , and Salon have featured excellent articles on this topic.

Psychologists for an Ethical APA is spearheading protests at this weekend's convention.

Photo credit: burge5000 (Creative Commons license)