Joseph Abrahams

Turning Lives Around: Wartime Treatment of Military Prisoners Joseph Abrahams

The Fort Knox Story: Wartime Therapy of Army Offenders is an account of a remarkable experiment during World War II that gives us a blueprint for an effective correctional community in the Twenty First Century. On the rolling hills of Kentucky, not far from the Fort Knox Gold Depositary, Col. George L. Miller led an intrepid band of Army reservists and mental health professionals in a seminal fight for the hearts and minds of thousands of general prisoners, returning a significant number to combat duty. The Fort Knox Story tells us what went on in this battle - in its patched-together shacks, training halls, and combat fields - that presages those to come when we campaign to win back our prisons. Basic to both is a prison, a secure place of containment, but also of recovery from alienation, personal and social. There, as we wrest control of the cliques and gangs - through group therapy, media, education, and recreation - we collaborate in creation of a "normal" culture, that by its very nature results in positive change. The American Army accepted, even welcomed Fort Knox's graduates, their success evidence of ongoing support and guidance. In The Fort Knox Story we envision that the future correctional community will be a "university within walls," training ground of a range of professions, and backup to an extramural system of support and guidance for its graduates. With many campuses, it will amount to a school for living, as well as institute for research in the causes and treatment of crime and deviance.