Michael B. Boccia Ph.D

On the Count: Madness, Humor, and Mental-Health Care in a Maximum-Security Prison Michael B. Boccia Ph.D

The decade of the 1970's was a fascinating chapter in the history of American correctional facilities, especially in the northeast. It was as though the social tumult of the 1960's had contagiously spilled over and into the sub-cultural existence of convicted felons in correctional facilities. The corrections world of the 70's might be viewed as a resurgence of "Freedom's Ferment", Alice Felt Tyler's brilliant account of Americans' quest for social reform and utopian life in the first half of the nineteenth century. Among the frightening events of the 70's were deadly prison riots, especially New York's Attica Correctional Facility, inmate strikes, correction officer strikes, the infiltration of the deadly AIDS virus among prisoners, and the first murder in USA history of a female correction officer on duty in a maximum security prison.

On a positive note, a few prison systems began to introduce cutting edge, mental health services for inmates within each maximum security prison, based on a community mental health model.

"On The Count" exposes the reader to many challenging and interesting, true experiences to enrich one's understanding of the mosaic_ often blood-stained, of daily life in the corrections community at that time. Many challenges in prisoner management have not changed since then.