CHAPTER 8 Perspectives on the addicts' world view

IT IS TYPICAL OF THE EARLY EXPERIENCE OF THE ADDICT- to-be that he knows or knows of people who use narcotics and who get away with it. They get away with it in the double sense that they are neither addicted nor are they known to the police. This double victory is witnessed by probably every individual who knowingly uses heroin illegally for the first time. It is as important a model of the consequences of drug use as that provided by the double-loser addict whom the newspapers and slick magazines sensationalize. Because the heroin novice has the opportunity to see for himself that it is possible to be an occasional user, there is further reinforcement of the tendency of ego to treat the self as exempt from the experience of personal disaster. This property was discussed in greater detail in an earlier section on the individual's path to addiction.' It is documented by the findings from this study, where four out of five believed they could use heroin and escape the hook of dependency.

Once hooked, they lose many of their negative attitudes about being addicted. A good many reflect upon the positive aspects of drug use, emphasizing the uniqueness of their experience as one which subjectively sets them apart from typical man's dull and routinized daily life.

Yet, there is in the addict an ambivalence on the meaning and the desirability of drug use. For example, while he may extoll its effects in elegant poetic metaphors, he tends to feel strongly against tempting or luring a square (nonuser) into drugs. Not only does he feel this way personally, he acknowledges that it is a strong principle among friends and acquaintances in the addict world. The arrogance and the swagger that emerges when he speaks of his own experiences with drugs shift to thoughtful deliberation, caution, and sometimes even passionate moral conservatism when contemplating his own role in spreading addiction. He can certainly feel that it is wrong to lure a square into addiction under the present circumstances of the illegality of drugs, yet he can approve of the idea of drug use in an abstract or ideal world. Thus it can be seen that there is no real or objective inconsistency, since the approval of drug use is only in an abstract or ideal world, and he merely warns against the kind of real life one would face if addicted in a world of hostile, power-wielding squares. The salient matter is that the addict here senses inconsistency and is probably ambivalent on the subject.

Contrary to the popular view, the veteran apprehended heroin addict commonly reports that his use of heroin is primarily to allow his body to function at equilibrium; he does not use it for euphoria or kicks. The using for kicks appears to be much more likely in the early phase of heroin consumption. That is true at least for these studies, where kicks is a motivating force, reportedly, for only a small minority of those who are fully addicted.

The claim is made by more than half of the addicts at CRC that the person they consider to be closest to them did not know that they were starting to use drugs. That the addict sees it as good strategy not to inform his "closest contact" of his decision to use drugs reflects an accurate awareness of the social meaning of narcotics use. The other information may be regarded as a measure of reaffirmation of the position stated at many other points: that if the user so wishes, the detection of the physical and physiological consequences of the opiates is difficult if not impossible to the naked eye. We have seen that this is true of the professionals who work with the addict as part of their routine job (and who must nevertheless rely upon chemical tests), but it is even true of the spouse or best friend or lover who has the opportunity to observe the myriad of moods outside of a strictly professional relationship.

The addict is himself aware of this possibility, and occasionally2 regards himself far superior to the alcohol consumer whose motor facilities are dramatically disturbed by drinking. The great majority believe that, while under the influence of heroin or morphine, they can competently drive a car, ride a bicycle, and perform other tasks that require coordination and some dexterity.' Taken in combination with their knowledge of how the world regards, treats, and compares the alcohol user vs. the drug user, one can appreciate the source of their bitterness about the rational and just character of social life. Even under circumstances that would seem to maximize their tendency to say the opposite,4 a full 40 per cent believe drug laws should be changed and narcotics made available to the addict through legal channels.

This bitterness about the perfidy of social justice gets expressed in many forms, from cynicism about the liquor lobby's campaign against marijuana to feelings of persecution that are often justified about the way the courts selectively handle the addict. To begin, the apprehended addict is likely to have had contact with authorities whose job demands unethical treatment. What the police really want from him is the name of the big supplier, the big seller in heroin. For this prize they are willing to subject him to continual harassment and even passive torture prior to his arrest. In an earlier section, I cited a Chicago state's attorney's defense of the practice of holding and detaining suspected addicts for long periods, openly admitting to a violation of their civil liberties.s According to the culture of the addict, it is during this detention period that the police allegedly bribe with heroin, knowing that after any fourteen-hour period, the addict's body will begin to go into withdrawal if unrelieved by the drug.' Since the police are legally permitted to hold a man for twenty-four hours on suspicion, there is plenty of time to break an addict down. Wretching on the floor of his empty cell in the city jail, he sees himself taunted with the alternative of heroin within his grasp and informing about his contact. At the first level, it is an ugly picture he draws of law enforcement.

But there is still more irony in it. In the following statement an addict reports how agents from the Federal Narcotics Bureau roughed him up before turning him over to the local authorities:

They came after me with a certain amount of relish. I didn't say "Sir!" and they were happy to have an excuse to hit me, saying I was disrespectful. What they really wanted to know about was The Man! When I wouldn't talk, one of them hit me hard, saying I was still being "disrespectful." I dropped my head down in self-protection and the other one said, "You're fleeing an arresting officer when you do that," and hit me so hard on the side of my head that my ear flesh is still mending from it. Then when they brought me here to this place (CRC), one of the first questions these counseling therapy guys wanted to know was "why was I so hostile to authority figures?" You get it man? You get it, don't you . . . they bust my ear, slam fists in my guts, then ask why am I so hostile to authority?

Of those addicts about which most is known, those apprehended and incarcerated, almost all have been through a court of justice. Because these people come almost entirely from the less privileged classes and can seldom afford the prohibitive fees of a private lawyer, they encounter the workings ofjustice in a way that further undermines their respect for the legal authorities of the society.7 Officially, of course, they have the right to counsel, and the public defender is there to serve this function. In practice, however, the public defender is typically an accomplice and confederate of the prosecuting attorney. As Sudnow's remarkable study of the public defender's office points out, the structure of the enterprise encourages the collusion of the two attorneys with the conclusion of the police reports.' In no sense does that structure encourage a critical posture and a serious legal defense of the accused, since a defense of each accused man would tie up the workings of the court with backlogs for years. Sudnow demonstrates that the public defender approaches the accused with the belief that he is guilty, and that the task is simply to get him to confess, plead him guilty—and on to the next case.

Findings from this study corroborate Sudnow's work. First, one fourth of the residents did not have any lawyer when the courts committed them to CRC. Of those who did have a lawyer, almost 70 per cent had a public defender. The interviewer explored the defendants' perception of the situation as it might have compared to a legal defense by a private attorney. Most saw it as an extension of an arm of the police and the courts. They did not regard the public defender as one actively engaged in the fight to protect their legal and constitutional rights as a citizen in an egalitarian republic. The public defender wanted a confession. Just as one would expect from Sudnow's description and analysis, the defender gave his client many reasons why he should plead guilty ("It will go easier on you," "We know you did it," and "Don't put on any innocent and pure act for me, the police aren't buying.")

But the relationship with the prosecuting attorney provokes even more selective persecutions for the addict, because it is more specific and particular to the addict. Every lawbreaker from the lower classes has a good chance of running into the public defender situation described, but the prosecuting attorney's interest in the big contact man behind the heroin black market makes his interest in the addict intense. Every single addict may be the important lead or link to proliferated racketeering and syndicated control. The deal that the prosecution is willing to offer him is more bald and more attractive than that offered to other law-breakers, like armed robbers who act alone. At the same time, the negative side of the deal is all the more difficult for the addict to face. He must inform on the illegal activities of others, and there are few stronger moral taboos to be violated in one's dealings with a legal authority.

Double Standards of Morality

Once inside the gates of a prison for the rehabilitation of the drug user, the addict has more opportunities than ordinary prisoners to see the operation and irony of a double standard of morality. Even in ordinary prisons, authorities refuse to let convicts do such things as swear and shout, while men normally do this when brought together in groups. (I do not mean to include such things as restrictions upon smoking and drinking. There are some admissible justifications here, for the regulation of time and place rules exist in any large, bureaucratically controlled institution. Reference is here made only to instances where the purpose is to make the individual a "better" person.) The very petty theft of a fourteen-cent ballpoint pen may be treated with gravity in a rehabilitation center, while it is scarcely noticed or is shrugged off in a school, a dormitory, or a church. To lose a ballpoint from your work desk is seen as simply one of the normal hazards of living a normal life among normal men. But after a CRC correctional counselor lost a ballpoint pen from his desk he described this consequence:

I brought it up the next day in the group (a therapy session of about 6o men). I told them that it was among them, and that it was their responsibility to return it to me. I use that pen to sign progress reports, and I let them know that I wasn't going to send out a single progress report until the pen was returned. You know that if the report isn't filed, they can't get out. Well, the internal pressures built up, and the pen was back on my desk within four days.

The counselor went on to say that it obviously was not the money, but the principle:

I couldn't have cared less about the pen. I just wanted to show them that they have the power to solve their own problems internally, and that they are a community that shouldn't permit one to get away with something like that.

It is unfair to conclude that the counselor is deluding himself into thinking he communicated some moral lesson. One can doubt that this was his interest. Nonetheless, the emphasis is upon what one "ought to do" in a community. That is a far cry from what is expected of even the staff, since "everyone knows" that you shouldn't leave your bicycle unlocked at the nearby shopping center. Few outside of prison walls would treat the violation with such concern, but while there is clearly a double standard, it is unclear to what degree the inmates subscribe to it. One female inmate recounted the following experience concerning one of her roommates:

They caught -- out back with one of the guys who comes up here to work on the grounds. They were just over in the corner flirting and maybe kissing a little bit, but you would have thought they had committed a crime that none of the counselors could have thought they themselves could perform. They were both "written up" for it, and it cost them each at least three months more in this place. The thing that gets me and a lot of the girls is that they (the staff) behave the same way. We know they play around with each other, flirting and probably a lot more, but if we dare do it, we get penalized and lectured too as though we were abnormal.

The staff defends its position that the double standard is in operation, but necessary. The rationale is that the inmates need greater discipline than normal people, and that the addicts have forfeited their right to normal freedoms by their antisocial and criminal past. But there is an inherent paradox and dilemma here. Presumably, the path back to normal social relations is through the experiencing of them, yet the Rehabilitation Center (and indeed, all prisons) preclude the possibility of such normality. Normal sex is not just normal sex, it is the occasion for serious admonition. Petty theft is not just petty theft, it is a signal of a serious failure of the whole rehabilitation process. In one group-therapy session that I witnessed, the principal subject was a woman inmate who worked in the kitchen as a cook. She had the practice of giving out an extra apple or orange to her friends, and of taking bread and fruit and cheese to her own room for evening snacks; additionally, she used this as a personal dispensing station of goodwill. In this particular session, all this was uncovered for the staff counselor for the first time. The counselor turned the problem back to the group for analysis and discussion. At first the group was cautious and protective, but the dam of resentment of the less-favored who got no apples finally broke, and many joined in on the revelations. The woman began by denying the charges, and at that point an interesting thing happened. Some of her friends turned against her "because she lied" about her activities, and reported the truth of the charges. The counselor kept directing the attention of the group to the question of why she took fruit. As might be expected, some of the analysis was glib, some obsequious, some laced with hostility, and some was penetrating and sensitive. (The problem most imminent then was simply to decide upon the legitimacy, the cogency, or the viability of any given analysis.)

After the session was over, I joined a post-session group of about ten of the sixty, including the counselor, who discussed what had transpired in the group. Since I was a visitor and thus in their view a "detached observer," they asked for my views. In sum, I said that the group had held the woman and themselves to standards which were far higher than those outside of the prison's walls. There was a sudden, unexpected, spontaneous clamour and shouting of agreement. "Right on !" "Right on !" That was correct, they said, and that was true about "everything else" in the institution. The counselor defended the standards on her own grounds, then turned back to the small group and asked them to analyze why they had erupted so spontaneously.

But the double standard is even more striking in areas that are not touched by the group session, most particularly the judgments by men in administrative positions that are not subject to group-therapy review. One case will illustrate the point. Certain rules define the boundaries where residents may walk. A female resident, while on duty as a canteen worker, once absent-mindedly carried some coffee a few yards outside of a boundary. (The boundary is not marked physically with lines, nor does it have a sign posted. One is simply supposed to remember not to walk past point X.) An administrator saw her, and submitted a report on the incident which, if honored by the releasing committee, would have delayed her release by several months. Happily, the report was not honored, but no one seriously raised the question about that administrator's "need" to submit such a serious indictment for so trivial a matter. The double standard of morality which some of the incisive addicts observe and poignantly feel lies therein: Using the very criteria of the institution for free and healthy development of the psyche, why should the psychic needs of the staff escape analysis and attention? In the eyes of the resident, this is more hypocrisy. The coffee incident should have been talked about in group just like any other.

The addict sees the double morality of the larger society in the same way as he sees the staff, and he is right. Once publicly labeled as an addict, his prospective employer, prospective friends, and so on, demand of him a stricter form of moral puritanism than of others. If he is late once or twice for the job, it is seen in terms of his lack of gratitude to the employer who surmounted the barrier of prejudice to hire him while he was on parole. If his temperament is surly and without the proper deference and humility, he displays that he is still "one of them" and not at all regretful of his past. If, on the other hand, he is too humble, he has been "beaten down into something less than a man" by his drug experience. What I am suggesting is that the society demands that he toe a precise and highly circumscribed line which, if the members of the society itself were so forced, they would reject out of hand as authoritarian and irrational. For the addict, the public chant that he is a coward fleeing a reality he can not bear to face is a special kind of mockery. There may be those for whom this is an accurate explanation of their earlier behavior leading to addiction. That is another matter for another book. But once addicted, the reality that addicts must face monthly requires a personal fortitude as strong as that demanded of ordinary men in a lifetime.

The Normality of the Deviant's World

Despite the agedness of the cliche, men are still both surprised and amused to learn of honor among thieves. That is because men persist in regarding social deviants as though they were totally different persons who should thereby possess totally different values. And so they find it surprising and funny too that drug addicts should regard a petty thief with an amount of indignation, resentment, and moral consternation equal to that possessed by the middle-class, suburban housewife. The symmetry is achieved when we discover that the petty thief regards the drug addict with equal moralistic derision. This is a parallel to white Protestants and Catholics who are surprised to find that Blacks share their own anti-Semitic prejudices. As Raymond Mack has pointed out, such whites would exclude the Negro from equal participation in the culture even to the extent of holding back his share in the nation's byways of bigotry.9

One strain in sociology has tried to raise the argument of a different kind of culture for the deviant, with a separate set of values,' while another strain represents deviance (of youth) as a purer form of adult values." In some aspects of the life of the deviant, each of these is undoubtedly true, and cogent arguments are contained in the essays by Miller and Matza. It is easy to lose sight of the congruency of values and morals between those who usurp for themselves the role of normals and those whom they then castigate as deviants. Even with so seemingly remarkable demarcations as the deviance of the mentally ill and the normality of mental health, there are strong congruencies." For the drug addict, the similarities between his views of the larger rights and wrong in the world, of the sources of dignity and respect, of what is proper and appropriate in relationships between friends, siblings, bureaucrats, and so on—the similarities of his views to those of the "normal" nonaddict are so close as to be interchangeable. We can take the view of the family as one example, and more particularly, the conception of the responsibilities of parents toward their children.

Some of the women residents in CRC are mothers. Their children are taken care of by relatives and friends on the outside. The identity which these women have as addicts is not nearly as strong as their identity as mothers. The conception of self as mother is typical enough, and the actual child-rearing practices (when the resident was with her children) are the common, expected, and normal practices of any other mother. Cicourel conducted a comparative study of the uniformity of the mother's role and her child-rearing practices of populations in Argentina and the United States." In both societies, he interviewed a range of social classes and types for the comparative basis in his data. As part of the data collected in the United States, he conducted interviews with female addicts who were mothers. His findings support the notion that the latter engage in the same behavior, and conceive of their own roles as mothers and of themselves in the same manner as other mothers from the same general classes and ethnic backgrounds who are not drug users.14

Chein and his associates note the same phenomena of the typical or normal views of the addict with respect to young adolescent populations." Nyswander and others record the normality of the addict's views of self as a special health easel' and the present study reports the normal character of the addict's social world and his view of it as he embarks upon first usage." True enough, Becker's and Finestone" emphasize the "outsider's" view which the addict takes, but neither makes his case in such a way as to challenge the position here stated: that the outsider's view incorporates, digests, and actually manifests the views of typical man insofar as it concerns life beyond the perimeters of the outsider's own narrowly conceived (i.e., by the self) deviance. As soon as we leave the specific arena of the deviance, the chances are very great that we are dealing with a typical man with values, interests, and commitments that are typical for the remaining categories and subcategories that may be used to describe him. To lose sight of this in the stampede to total identification of the deviant is to court failure at every turn, from first apprehension to final release from parole. If we keep it uppermost in our minds, however, it will force us to raise questions at the very outset which challenge the whole process of apprehension, generic treatment, and total surveillance upon parole.

The Counselor On the Addict's Attitude

A segment of this study was concerned with the correctional counselor's judgment of the addict's readiness for normal society. This problem involves not only the view of readiness, but also includes the counselor's conception of what does and what should constitute normal society.

For each resident inmate of the Rehabilitation Center, a rather complete file is maintained from the day he enters the program until his release. His counselor files periodic reports on his progress, or lack of it, detailing such items as attitudes toward work, responsibility, deviance, and of course the group-therapy sessions. These files were analyzed for more than half of the subjects who were part of the intensive interview study. A consistent finding was the importance of the initial impression that the inmate makes upon his counselor. It typically remains intact for several evaluations at least, and often follows him throughout the time the counselor in question has contact. The turnover of counselors provides an interesting phenomenon for contrast. When a new counselor enters the scene, there is no reliability that his judgment of the character and potential success of the inmate will be consistent with that of the old counselor. It should surprise no one but the counselors themselves that the consistency within the long file reports of a single counselor are higher than the consistency of file reports between counselors on the same inmate. That finding may raise no eyebrows, but it does raise face-valid questions about judgmental reliability.

If a resident joined some group, that is to say, informally "hung around" with a select bunch, that was the single most important factor in the counselor's judgment of him. It tended to override all other characterizations with ease. One gets the impression that the counselor knows his own dormitory very thoroughly, for he writes with confidence about the deviant cliques and the responsible cliques, the jokers, the immature, and the troublemakers. The nature of the group joined was, of course, critical, but also of importance was the point in time in which the group was joined. For a resident to join a deviant group within a few weeks of his arrival placed an indelible mark upon him that could hardly be erased even if he later renounced that group. However, if he waited a few months, joined a deviant group, then renounced it, he was considered "saved." The explanation which seemed most reasonable of the counselors' view was that the early noncommital behavior of the addict reflected a searching for identity that was later misplaced into the wrong grouping. For the "original" deviants, however, the immediate identification with a deviant group was treated as the "homing" activity of a through-and-through deviant.

The counselors' reports were analyzed in a search for the kind of reasons that the counselor believed led the inmate to narcotics, the kinds of cure or treatment he considered best for the individual case, and the chances he gave for the success of the CRC program. These data were then compared to the data collected in the interviews with the inmates themselves.

First, with regard to the kinds of reasons that the counselors believed led to drug use, social factors played a surprisingly dominant role in their written reports. The role of the peer group, a sense of belonging, conditions and structure of the family life, and the like are constantly cited. Factors of individual personality are also noted, but to a much lesser extent. This finding was surprising because (a) it does not coincide with the verbal expressions which the counselors and other staff give when asked about how the addict becomes addicted, and (b) when we turn to the kind of cure recommended, personality changes are seen as the predominant vehicle. The larger explanation for this inconsistency will be taken up later when we turn to how men shift their interpretation of deviant and criminal activity depending upon the stage of the judicial-legal process in which it is seen.

The cure or treatment which the counselor recommends, then, is group therapy and the reorganization of personality. That is understandable enough in that this is institution policy, and these are written reports to superiors. There are occasional reports that group therapy seems ineffective for a particular case, usually because he "just isn't mature enough for it" or because he is "lost" to salvation. However, there are a few forthright admissions that the treatment program will not be effective on an individual. The greatest measure of doubt comes in the assessment of the likelihood that the resident will be successfully rehabilitated by his experience at CRC. That is, it seems that the counselors have great self-assurance that they know both the source of the motivation for drug use and the best kinds of treatment, but have reservations about the success of the program in rehabilitating the ex-addict for normal return to normal society.

The explanation for this lies very close to the second aspect of the problem of the counselor's task that must now be examined, namely, the counselor's conception of the community to which the ex-addict should return. As noted earlier, the very nature of the occupation of counselor makes its occupant a member of the middle class. That does not mean that he will necessarily carry his class bias and his class view into his professional job, but this is a liLly occurrence at the very least unless consciously checked at every turn. Thus, for example, if we ask what ought a typical man do with his salary, we would expect to get different answers depending upon whether the respondent was working class, middle class, or upper class. So long as this is merely a judgmental matter of opinion, there is nothing nefarious to be noted in these differences. When, however, one class member is in the position to pass judgment on the life chances and the freedom of some one from a different social class, ethical and value premises arise. Such is the case with the Rehabilitation Center, where almost all the inmates are working class and all the treatment staff is middle class. It is the middle-class treatment counselor who has the dominant and commanding view of the way normal life should 1.e lived in the outside community: An inmate who announced in group that he "lived only for the weekends" was cited for this in a counselor's file report as "socially irresponsible and immature." An inmate who "spent too much time with a small clique" of friends rather than developing some individual "strength and independence" was cited for this as revealing an inability to maintain himself "on the streets" without help "from the wrong elements." Inmates who see the police and all legal authorities as their enemies are cited in the file reports as recalcitrant and socially maladjusted—despite the fact that we know from other sociological studies that this orientation to the police is highly class-related, with the middle class seeing the police as their protectors and the working class perceiving the police often as hostile and harassing."

Thus, the counselor's highly class-biased views of what constitutes appropriate behavior in the community of normal men infuses his judgment of the readiness of the inmate for release. That the inmate is working class explains a great deal of the counselor's skepticism about the degree of rehabilitation that has taken place and the possibility of successful return to the community. What is less appreciated is the fact that the inmate is likely to return to a working-class community, not a middle-class one. His "rehabilitation" may therefore specifically maladjust him for the return. Those who look for more reasons to explain the high recidivism rates from these institutions might do well to consider this point.

The counselor in the institution is not the only authority who experiences this frustration that seems to be built in to the system of handling incarcerated addicts. The parole officer who takes over the surveillance outside the prison walls experiences it even more strongly. In the following section, we will explore some of the common problems of the parole situation that arise when men succumb to the total identification of the addict as a deviant.

The Parole Agent as the Keeper of Middle-Class Morality

In the intricate and complex relationship between law and morality, nowhere is the interplay clearer than in the role of the parole agent. He exercises significant authority with a great deal of latitude. The situation is in striking contrast to that of the policeman, whose activities are much more restricted by explicit rules of legal procedure. True enough, the policeman must use discretion on his job. However, he is only given an inch, and so he must take his mile. The parole agent is given a mile to start with, and what he can take is proportionately greater.

The police officer must apprehend the "criminal" before his formal conviction. He is restrained in his handling of suspects because the law guarantees that a man is officially innocent until proven guilty by due process. If the officer makes a mistake in the sometimes long and tedious process from suspicion to apprehension to arrest, a lawyer for the defense can free the accused with skillful legalistic footwork. This makes the policeman's job a study in role conflict. The public demands that all crimes be solved and that all culprits be brought to justice. Simultaneously, the public (or perhaps better, the courts, the ACLU, some civil libertarians, and the Constitution) demands that suspects have their rights as private citizens protected until convicted.

Once convicted, the law violator loses most of his rights. If he is sentenced to prison for a felony, he cannot vote, he has no more right to privacy, and he may legally be the subject of continual invasions of his domain, his personal property, and even his person. When he leaves the prison on parole, he is still technically serving his sentence and has not regained his rights. At this point, the parole officer takes charge of the case. To a greater degree than the policeman, he can exercise his own judgment as to whether the parolee belongs back in prison, or whether he should remain out on parole. The breadth of his discretion and latitude in the exercise of moral judgment means that he has the decisive voice about appropriate, acceptable, and normal behavior. It has just been noted that the treatment staff in the rehabilitation center acknowledge a double standard of morality, and argue that the law violator has lost the right to pursue normal life with its immunity from minor transgressions in rules and laws; that instead, the convict must prove that he is a better person than those on the outside.

Many parole agents feel the same way about their case subjects. Ex-drug addicts on parole are typically not permitted to drink alcohol to the point of being "high." They are given strict curfews, permitted only certain kinds of acceptable jobs, are required to report periodically and systematically, and are required to hold steady employment. To be unemployed is obviously no crime, but it is a serious parole violation for which the parole department may send the parolee back to prison. There are many reasons for this regulation, as there are reasons for other stipulated activities which have as their official justification the creation of a climate for "staying out of trouble with the law." However, in their own right, these rules reflect a certain view of the appropriate life of the individual in society. One ought to have a job, philosophizes the parole department, whether or not he need do so for subsistence. One ought not get drunk, whether this has anything to do with the ex-addict's heroin or not. So we fmd deeply imbedded in the idea of parole violations themselves the tendency to specify the appropriate life for the parolee, an appropriateness that can be divorced from the consideration of law violation.

As noted, this differs greatly from the role and concern of the police, especially in the degree to which it is possible to impose appropriate behavior. The police may know that adultery is being committed, but unless there is a plaintiff and strong evidence that will stand up in a court of law, nothing can be done to the known culprits. However, if the parole agent knows of the adultery of the parolee in the same way as any normal member of the community might know (heresay, gossip, circumstantial evidence), there need be noflagrante delicto for corrective action. When the parole agent finds out that his colleague in the office has been "playing around with someone's wife," he may be very annoyed, but it is dangerous and shaky business to act upon that knowledge. There are points of law, proof, and slander. The very same parole agent is capable of effective indignation when his parolee is "playing around." The legal issue of legal proof is not a question. Here is a case of the use of a conception of natural law. "The adulterer deserves to be punished." The fact that he is, say, an ex-drug addict on parole makes him accessible to the punishment he "deserves." So, the adulterous drug addict is sent back to prison by his parole officer not because he relapsed into heroin usage, but because of his affrontery of sexual morality. Adultery, indeed, is against the law. However, it is critical to the point being made that "everyone knows" people don't get sent to jail for adultery. They may get beaten up, they may be subpoenaed to the witness stand or sued for alienation of affection; but they are rarely imprisoned for adultery in American society.

Nonetheless, the parole officer feels thoroughly justified in his action. His rationale is intricate, but much of it can be summarized in the notion that a parolee is engaging in immoral behavior which signals that he lacks rehabilitation to society's demands.

There are better examples than adultery, however, to illustrate how the parole officer acts as the keeper of middle-class morality. Adultery is illegal. Going to the race track and betting is not. Yet a parolee who had remained spotless as far as the law was concerned was returned to prison for refusing to "accommodate to a style of life that is conducive to law-abiding behavior." The primary documentary evidence for this violation of appropriate life-style was repeated adventures to the race track, and only occasional employment.

It will come as no surprise that parolees from middle-class backgrounds have a much easier time complying with the rules of keeping in good standing with the parole office. A stable home life is usually an important plus for the parolee, as are the kinds of friends with whom he associates. Since the parole agent is himself middle-class or aspiring thereto, he typically and perhaps naturally favors the kinds of parolees who can sustain friendships in that class. More important, the quality of the friendship and the nature of acceptable activities that are pursued are critically related to social class. The ideal is one who saves his money and adjusts his life and his aspirations to those with power and prestige in the society. Setting a portion of one's income aside for a future when one can move to a better residential area is in this context a positive act. But if one comes from a lower or working-class background, the chances are so much greater that more immediate pleasures on the weekend and flashy clothing give the real currency to living."

For the parole officer, this "unwise" use of hard-earned money is a point which allows him to call the whole rehabilitation of the ex-convict into serious question, and parole violations for such persons take on a new dimension of seriousness.

As a direct consequence of this, the period on parole is a time where the ex-convict ex-addict is most resentful of the selective treatment directed towards him. Other criminals on parole are far more likely to get away with minor transgressions such as seeing old friends and taking a drink if they simply avoid trouble with the police. The ex-addict on parole sees himself quite correctly in a different situation. His minor transgressions of the same dimension (in his eyes) are treated by the parole agent as a lapse into "drug-prone" behavior. The increasing sophistication of the agents concerning the concepts of a total social environment for the addict produce a stronger impulse for surveillance. This in turn makes the addict feel himself relatively deprived and the return to old friends and the return to drug use becomes increasingly imminent.

Relapse and the Addict's View of It

Of the many factors that account for the high rate of relapse into drug use after parole, the addict himself counts two most heavily. These are the harassment-benevolence of squares and outsiders, and the hearty welcome and comfortable atmosphere of the old friends who are still using.

Led by the Nalline testers and the parole agent, the society at large invades the life of the paroled addict to a degree that he usually experiences as persistent harassment if not persecution. He must report regularly for Nalline tests, which serve to inform authorities to their own satisfaction that he is or is not using. (There has recently been some controversy about the fallibility of Nalline testing, but that is another point.) In addition to these regular appointments, he must expect some surprise visits from authorities who at any moment may take him in for more tests. The most feared and the most hated harassment, however, is the spot visit at 3 A.M. that always hangs over the paroled addict, even though he may experience it only once during several months of parole. This is simply something of a bed-check by the authorities to see to it that the parolee is not only living where he is supposed to be living, but also that he is keeping to the curfew that has been set. For the parolee who is tottering on the edge and may be pushed either way, this is experienced as a degradation ceremony (especially if he is not living alone) and sensed as harassment, even though some will be moved to begrudgingly state that it is a necessary evil for others.

Alongside of those who subject the addict to what he feels is harassment are those who are charitable and who give of themselves to him, but who do so in a style and manner which he comes to resent as benevolent at best. Very commonly and ironically, it is the employer who "condescended" to hire him that the addict parolee comes to resent most.

They never miss a chance to remind you that they did you a big favor by giving you a job, even the lousiest dish-washing job, and that you should be eternally grateful for it. If you are two minutes late, or leave a speck of a spot on the floor, they may not say it, but they look at you as though they wonder if they ever should have done you that big favor. . . just like they weren't paying you a god-damn pittance for nine hours of labor.

In one sense, the employer of the parolee seems unable to win such a battle. Even if he keeps quiet and goes out of his way to show special attention to the sensitivity of his employee, he is regarded with a dubious eye. However much truth there may be in a particular charge, the remarkable sensitivity and tenderness of the addict's ego on this point turn his vision to one of persecution.

In any case, the potential harassment of the parolee at any juncture makes it impossible for him to conceal from those closest to him (physically and emotionally), from employer to friend to lover, that he is a parolee. Because they thereby know who he is (total identification), he imputes to them a series of feelings and attitudes about his past that makes it very difficult for them to pursue a normal and relaxed social or personal relationship. Thus the very structure of the parole situation, which sets up a quasi-normality for the parolee, acts as a push in the direction of relapse, because the parolee after a time seeks the more relaxed and comfortable, taken-for-granted atmosphere of his old addict cronies. They demand little else of him than that he join them for a social evening. This is not to suggest that his persecution is delusion and paranoia. Some is and some is not. The point is that the distinction between the two is neither meaningful nor made from the addict's view because the structure of his social situation makes the distinction for him irrelevant. He finds that the only people who, in his terms, "accept him for what he is" are the old addict friends. They welcome him back with the cynical assurance that once an addict, always an addict. But they express this in the most congenial manner, and he feels no moral condescension from them, for they themselves are "hop-heads."

But the structure of the parole situation gets even more diabolically ironic at this point, because simply being with old addict friends is a parole violation of serious dimensions. With his own justification, the parole agent treats the return to the old circle for the sociological significance that he begins to invest in it. Any warning that is forthcoming about a situation that does not directly involve the use of heroin is treated by the addict parolee as more unnecessary harassment. That, in its turn, impels him further on the way to more serious violation and complete relapse.

To understand the relapse into drug use, it is critical that one understand the way in which the ex-addict makes a separation between the moral meaning of drug use and the moral meaning of other illegal activity. He does not regard the consumption of morphine or heroin itself with moral approbation; but rather it is those things which addiction to drugs drives one to that he regards as morally reprehensible. The moral degradation of the man's self-conception comes when he must steal to supply his habit, but it is not the habit itself which he abhors for its moral turpitude. Thus, when he is feeling harassed by the world of authorities and squares, it is no big thing to return to the needle-wielding friends, and, indeed, to the needle.22

The popular conception of the ex-addict's return to drug use is in error, therefore, when it conceives of a significant and remarkable breakdown of a structure of positive attitudes. The chances are that the ex-addict never came to the point where he conceived of drug use in character-transforming terms. The decision to use cannot then be explained as a character-transforming decision.

On the "Failure" of Rehabilitation

In a world where the typical public relations or advertising man is paid more than twice as much as the typical hospital worker, men will find ways to turn disturbing ideas into more comforting euphemisms, and indeed, to phrases that signal positive development. I have just said in the last chapter that the rehabilitation of the deviant is doomed to failure by the very criteria of the institution that is set up to rehabilitate him. Just as there are ways of avoiding the issue of why the care of the sick should be less rewarded than the construction of the right jingle, so are there ways of avoiding the word failure.

Ordinarily, a high rate of return to a prison (recidivism) is regarded as the failure of the institution to successfully rehabilitate the convict. A prison may be successful in punishing a criminal and successful in keeping him off the streets, but if he returns to a life of crime he has not been rehabilitated. For reasons that have been detailed elsewhere, the blame is more on the society, but failure is failure, and like Juliet's rose, the change of name does not alter the scent. The California Rehabilitation Center has rephrased the problem to avoid the term failure even on the question of rehabilitation. The CRC solution begins with the use of an analog: In an ordinary hospital when a physician sends the patient away from the hospital on an out-patient basis, he does so because he believes that the patient can manage outside of the complete dependency of the hospital. If the ailment flares up again, he is called back, examined, and perhaps retained for more treatment. The original treatment is not called a failure.

So it is with a Rehabilitation Center. Those who return are "not regarded as failures of the treatment program, but as interim patients that come and go as their adjustment to the community reveals a need for more treatment." Even if the whole treatment staff at CRC can completely accept this interpretation, the returning addict cannot. True enough, the relationship between the individual and the prison may be intricate in its psychic dimensions. Any individual addict may be diagnosed as having a pathological need for the total embrace of a total institution that suspends his responsibility about individual decision-making. (However, even in such cases, the admission to the self that one needs that total environmental control is clearly separable from the view of one's self as a "success" in a world which treats such return to prison as failure.) Those addicts who are returned to CRC because of a minor transgression of parole rules and not for heroin use feel cheated. They know that outside of CRC the return is regarded as a failure. Yet they get the label without having had the indulgence in the very activity that has been used to identify them totally as failures.

But the implication should not be drawn that a dramatic change or reversal in the attitude of the addict about his own failure or success would ameliorate the problem of his rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is a two-sided transaction, and the receiving society must take the first step. The society must begin first not just because "it started it," but because no other solution is possible. One or two individual addicts in one hundred may manage to stay away from relapse and failure. However, because one or two black slaves in one hundred escaped to freedom, the success of those few with the underground railroad did not prove that all it takes is individual will power and a strong personality to escape. Those slaves escaped in spite of the system of controls on runaway slaves, and they escaped as much as by propitious circumstance as by force of personality. The perseverance or fortitude of a Dred Scott or any other runaway did not reduce the likelihood of his being caught, beaten, and returned. From a sociological point of view, the apprehended addict is as totally identified as the slave. No matter what his personality, so long as the society honors a system that catches, supervises, harasses, and degrades him, only one or two in one hundred will escape.23 It is then a travesty to use those one or two addicts who do escape as evidence that all other addicts could manage as well if their psyches were well put together. This has the same illogic as pointing to a successful runaway slave in 18so and saying to the other hundreds of thousands of slaves: "He did it, why couldn't you?" A century later, we can look back and see that it was the institution of slavery that needed alteration, not the individual personalities who could not escape from under it. Perhaps it will take us a century to look back upon the narcotics problem to understand that its essence does not lie within the structure of the individual's psyche, but in the prevailing social interpretation and social meaning of narcotics use.