The old block of the state prison in Woods Run smells of urine. Prisoners live two to a cell, in cells stacked five tiers high.
A short walk across the yard, prisoners in a treatment program live isolated from those general population inmates in orderly pods. They have work tables to make motivational posters that hang on walls. One poster urges cleanliness with a hand-colored picture of a yellow rubber ducky.
After closing the 126-year-old prison along the Ohio River for two years, the state reopened it in 2007, and a portion is being used to rehabilitate drug- and alcohol-addicted inmates who committed crimes related to their substance abuse. New Jersey-based Community Education Centers runs four therapeutic communities for 183 inmates separated from the 800 general population prisoners, some of whom are serving life sentences.
The prisoners in the addiction program start their day with morning stretches and by reading inspirational messages before spending up to five hours in therapy sessions and other meetings.
This program started in December at the North Side prison and is considered a success, said Becky Chambers, community manager at SCI-Pittsburgh.
But a prison drug therapy expert said new therapeutic communities are prone to failure.
"No one challenges the model, if it's instituted right," said Harry K. Wexler, a New York-based researcher with the National Development & Research Institutes. "If it isn't, then you have a problem, and it may not go well."
Prison rehab in these "community" settings teaches general skills, said Melissa Weglarz, Community Education Centers' in-prison treatment state director. It involves not only intensive group therapy but also basic etiquette, such as properly introducing yourself to a stranger.
"They're coming out," Chambers said of the inmates, some of whom are doing extra time for violating parole on an earlier offense. "Wouldn't you want them to get the skills they need?"
Yes, said Rich Foster, corrections division director at Gateway Rehabilitation Center, but they need more treatment upon release.
"It's very useful to get services while they are incarcerated, but it's important for us to pick up where the therapeutic communities leave off," Foster said.
Building the therapeutic community takes time, said Wexler, who is not affiliated with the Pennsylvania treatment programs. If the programs don't respond to recommendations for improvement, as happened in California for 18 years, they'll be criticized and unsuccessful, Wexler said.
California's inspector general in February 2007 blamed treatment programs for wasting $1 billion and faulted the state's management for not responding to research recommendations to improve. A University of California-Los Angeles study concluded the programs imitated therapeutic communities "in name only," the inspector general's report said, and didn't reduce recidivism rates.
"Basically, it was a billion-dollar bust," Chief Deputy Inspector General Brett H. Morgan said. "They blew it."
Pennsylvania has used therapeutic communities in prisons for more than 10 years, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said. It has 1,952 therapeutic community beds at 27 institutions. The state spent $32.6 million last year on drug and alcohol treatment, according to department figures, treating 12,723 of 42,960 prisoners for addictions.
A 2006 Temple University study showed therapeutic communities reduced Pennsylvania inmate recidivism rates by 11 percent.
The inmates must interact and support one another, as they would in addiction support groups outside of prison, Weglarz said. They keep clean cells, a clean common area and follow established house rules, or they will be kicked out.
They face extended sentences if they don't complete the program, SCI-Pittsburgh spokeswoman Carol Scire said. That matters, she said, because these inmates are near their release dates.
The mood is different in the Woods Run therapeutic communities, said Thomas Dillingham, a correctional officer at the prison since 1992. Stationed in a therapeutic community, he feels like he's helping inmates recover and not just guarding them.
"A lot of people don't know," Dillingham said, "this is the other side of corrections."
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