ClickNation

Despite vast public indifference, I am blogging again. Time goes by. I stopped after I got a new job a while ago and that became all-consuming. But I have a need to write to focus my ideas. And to write something other than endless write-only progress notes.

ExtraTV called it a Britney Spears’s “foul-mothed tirade,” but I think they’re missing the point. “Eat it, lick it, snort it, f*%k it!” isn’t a tirade, it’s a life philosophy.

When Britney first came on the scene, people said she was too slickly produced. Now she seems to have gotten past that stage. If you’re looking for an object lesson in what happens to people without any core values, she’s the paradigm.

It’s all less amusing because there are kids involved. Leafing through the inestimable TMZ.com, one item struck me. Seems the parenting coach sent by the judge to observe Britney’s mothering didn’t quite feel the love in the home: ” ‘during all three of my visits, Ms. Spears rarely engaged with the children in either conversation or play.’ […] ‘It seems that [Britney’s] choices are dependent more upon what she wants to do at any given time rather than what would be more enjoyable for the children.’ The coach also said Spears seemed to have a ‘lack of general attention at times’ but there was nothing she ‘would characterize as abusive in a traditional sense.’ ”

Too bad she learned too late that children aren’t decorations, or toys.

A beautiful slide show on a young woman dealing with Kentucky treatment court.

The articles are the result of 4 years of reporting on the woman’s case by Lexington Herald-Leader reporters. The Herald-Leader has gone all out with the multimedia show, pdfs of the articles available, and plenty of data and sidebars.

“As she walks out the door, Tonio [5] asks in a baby voice too young for his age whether she is going to jail.

She doesn’t answer.

She sits on the step, and David [3] begins to cry, arms around her neck. “Don’t go,” he whines, smashing into her face with his cheek. “Don’t go. I want to go.”

As his mother gets in her car, Kobe [2] flings himself to the ground, then clings to the yard’s fence as his dad tries to peel him off.

Kobe’s wails trail her down the block.

But the drugs work. She doesn’t cry.”

As I’m writing this, there remain two more days of reports. I can’t wait.

Brennan Center for Justice (NYU)

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project

Psychology and the Prison System (American Psychological Association)

Stanford Prison Experiment

The Sentencing Project

Tonight is a two-hour Ted Koppel presentation on prison (Discovery Channel 9pm). I’m hoping for some in-depth discussion of the issues, but I worry that it will be just more blah, blah, blah about overcrowding, lack of vocational services, racial segregation. We’ve seen all this before, as MSNBC seems to have its collection of “Lockup” documentaries on infinite loop. What we don’t see is solutions:

• building political will to crank down the criminalization of everything, especially drug use
• putting public money into alternatives to incarceration, which has got to be the best bargain out there
• rebuilding the educational and vocational programs in prison. We should consider prison an opportunity to extend high school and college to that segment who fell off the educational track earlier
• Oh yeah, and treat not just the substance abuse, but the other mental disorders

I had a chance on Friday to spend the day in a therapeutic community for substance abusers as part of my training. It was an intriguing experience. The idea was that we (8 counselors) would come in as new residents, participate in a meeting, work on a crew, observe an encounter session. I was assigned to a cleaning crew. I learned that I am not very good at the string mop, but got better. My vacuuming was fine.

It was all unnatural, of course, because the residents knew we were leaving at the end of the day. Also, we all had adequate ego strength, drug-free systems, etc. which are likely not the norm among most first day residents.

NIDA has a 2002 report on therapeutic communities, their structure and efficacy.

Video podcasts available. Of particular interest is the 2006 McNaughton lecture: Brazilian biochemist Sergio Pena talks about racial diversity.

Built in 1858, “this institution owes its origin mainly to the energy of Dr. J. Edward Turner, and is the first of the kind ever established in the world. It is founded on the theory that inebriety, like insanity, is a disease, requiring like that, for its cure, medical and moral treatment (Barber & Howe, 1861).” You can just see the building from Route 17 as you drive through Binghamton.

A nice aerial shot is available on Google Maps.

The postcard is from a very attractive site by Roger Luther with lots of his recent photographs and many interesting historical documents. A recent addition is stories from relatives of residents.

A series of short articles on the reconceptualization of drunkenness into addiction in the 19th century. Including an interesting gloss on the Victorian terms for addiction, including my favorite: dipsomania.