Word: sdps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...judged "criminally-insane," who are under commitment or in for pre-trial observation, were moved across the road last December into a new maximum-security complex that has toilets in the cells and is surrounded by a double barbed-wire steel fence instead of brick walls. Those judged as SDPs remain behind in the old prison, one part of which is so dirty that a federal district court judge last September challenged on confinement in Bridgewater on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punisment...
Prisoners in both the "state hospital" for the criminally-insane and the treatment center for SDPs have indeterminate sentences. They are confined by judicial order under a "psychiatrist's" a recommendation, and can not be released until two prison psychiatrists" give their approval. Wealthy persons can hire their own psychiatrists; the poor must use those provided by the Department of Corrections...
...treatment center the SDPs admire women who, like Riva Korashon '75, are not afraid to come in and tutor them. When Riva couldn't get down to Bridgewater one week she wrote her tutee a letter. She got back a note written on the level of a struggling first grade student, with post-script "I love...
...says he would prefer to see volunteers working on research and political projects, such as lobbying for the bill now before the state legislature that would take SDPs out of the prison and place them in mental hospitals...
Distorted and sensational reporting by the media does as much to impede prison reform as organized political opposition. A recent Boston magazine "expose" of the treatment center for SDPs described at length the violent sexual acts of two treatment center inmates, then closed with a lament that SDPs have enormous trouble gaining the community's acceptance after they have left the center. Such articles ignore the plight of the majority who are not incorrigible and allow people to harbor misconceptions about who inhabits our prisons and what can or cannot be done to help them...