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Program Overview
The Pender Day Training Program provides services to 66 developmentally disabled adult inmates housed within a 756 bed medium custody prison located in Burgaw, North Carolina. The clients served in the Day Traing Program (DTP) - also called the Work Adjustment Program - are convicted felons who are referred from intake processing centers and general prisonunits throughout the state. Referrals are based on a provisional diagnosis of mental retardation and a physical capacity to participate in vocational activities available in the Progam for six hours per day. Although housed as a group in two wings of one dormitory, DTP inmates are not generally separated from the general inmate population.
Program Philosopy
The Day Training Program is designed to make operational the goal of teaching progressively more responsible behavior to developmentally disabled inmates. The focus is on the development and strengthening of old fashioned work ethics and civil interpersonal behavior. It meets both management and treatment needs by using a variety of vocational training activities to teach mentally retarded offenders the basic social skills necessary for productive employment. It is a primary contention of the DTP that the participants' histories of employment failures and criminal conduct are a matter of willingness and motivation rather than intellecual capacity or disability, more a matter of work ethics and social values than specific skills or social skills. Developmental disabilities in and of themselves do not cause criminal conduct, and antisocial values are learned by the same means as prosocial values. Refusal to work and active opposition to instruction and direction are learned patterns of behavior subject to the same principles of learning as any other pattern of behavior. Developmentally disabled individuals learn by the same methods as anyone else and are accordingly responsible for their own behavior management within the limits of their disability. Mental Retardation is not considered a disability of character or conduct but rather a limiting factor to be taken into consideration when working and interacting with the DD individual.
Program Description
Five full-time and three part-time staff provide basic developmental disability case management services and vocational training activities. All inmates assigned to the DTP participate in training activities six hours per day, five days per week, for a minimum of six months. Training activities include a state-of-the-art horticulture program with greenhouse maintenance and landscape design, construction projects (e.g., bricklaying, woodworking, concrete construction), commercial sewing, and compensatory education. Participants are confronted with learning opportunities which reinforce adaptive styles of interpersonal interaction. Each participant's basic schedule of treatment activities and related training objectives are established and implemented through a treatment team process and there are monthly progress notes from all service providers. Each inmate's job peformance is evaluated in 10 job rating categories each month for each activity yielding a monthly Work Adjustment Profile. Primary emphasis is on the development of adaptive styles of interpersonal interaction, particularly as such skills relate to productive employment (e.g., relationship to authority/supervisor, relationship with coworkers, time management, motivation and effort, and safety and security). Specific performance skills are also taught, but primary emphasis is on general social skills that are essential in any job or social situation. It is in this manner we feel the program will have the most effect on offender recidivism.
All DTP staff receive ongoing training in behavioral problem prevention techniques based on principles of learning (Behavioral Relativity). DTP staff are specially trained in how to set clear behavioral limits, how to teach personal responsibility and self-discipline, and how to interact with inmates without reinforcing maladaptive patterns of behavior.
"Behavioral Relativity" is a holistic cognitive-behavioral model of human behavior founded solidly on basic principles of learning. It encourages the use of technically correct terminology to describe behavioral processes, thus improving communication, analysis, and correct behavior problem solving skills. Although consistent with more traditional behavior modification and contingency management techniques, Behavioral Relativity also extends the basic principles of learning (operant and classical conditioning) to the domain of the imagination. Real learning occurs in the imagination - and what a person believes and how a person thinks sets expectations just as do situational factors. These expectations have real physiological effects, and the learning process and consequences of thought shape desires, emotions, and overt behavior just as do situational constraints and contingency management protocols.
Requests for additonal information may be directed to:
Anthony Powell, M.A.
Psychological Program Manager
Phone: (910) 259-8735
Fax: (910) 259-6919