Families of Prisoners Support Group
This community is dedicated to families that have been disrupted by prison. Having a loved one incarcerated or having been incarcerated comes with its own unique challenges that require support and understanding. Join the group to find others who know what you're going through, and to seek advice or share your experience.
Hello, My son was recently incarcerated. He states that he has a prison case worker. I tried googling what their role is but couldn't find anything. Does anyone know what their duties/role includes?
Yeah, I know what you were referring to. Apparently in your country, as you stated, they bring in real counselors----with real college degrees----to help the inmates and the term "counselor" and "case manager" are different.
But in all the prisons I have been or ever heard about, real counselors are never---or rarely---- brought in from the outside. Apparently in your country rehabilitation is important and here in the United States it is not.
I have never seen a real counselor inside a prison. Counselor and CMs were used interchangeably and referred to the same person.
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the guys do have to prove that the counseling is need but a lot of the programs that we have the guys do get a bit of one on one counseling.
For example, we had a drug program at the medium where a female case manager stood in front of the group and read pages from a drug treatment manual. She did not know the difference in opiates, benzodiazepines, or methamphetamine. She was just there to supervise the class.
I was at a minimum where real vo-tech teachers came in from the outside to work for the DOC. They taught such things as welding, masonry, computer data entry, electricity, etc, but these teachers were not counselors in any form or fashion.
There are very few instances when a qualified professional comes to a prison and counsels a group of inmates. Most prisoners do have a psychologist to talk to inmates with mental problems, but they just skim the surface and are useless. Since most prisons do not allow inmates to have the drugs needed to help them with their mental disabilities, there is no need for anyone too qualified to come in the prison anyway; he could not write prescriptions for any mental problem anyway.
Most of the meetings between the prison psychologist and an inmate is nothing more than a "pep talk" rather than any therapeutic session.
Very little "counseling" goes on in prison in this country. The AA programs and NA programs were managed by the chaplain rather than someone trained in substance abuse management.
The idea that the prison system cares enough to bring in qualified counselors trained in their field to help inmates is sort of laughable. The prison does not want to spend the money and besides, they don't care that much about the inmate as a person to do anything like that.
To many people an inmate is just a number and someone we have to tolerate as a society, instead of being seen as a human being----someone's father, son, husband, BF, or family member. As long as this attitude prevails, nothing will ever change.
And this is a big problem. Many inmates, with the proper treatment, could probably reintegrate back into society and would never come back to prison. But that would take money, which the prison system nor the public wants to spend. They use all their budget to house more and more prisoners instead of taking care and rehabilitating the ones they have.
Two words----apathy and politics. Nobody cares about these inmates except their families----God Bless 'em-----and with the political climate in this country today, nobody wants to give an inmate a chance or a break as that would be seen as being soft on crime.
Our criminal justice system and prison system is just in one helluva mess.
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