Critical Analysis of Houses of Healing by Robin Casajian

Criminal Justice
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Critical Analysis of Houses of Healing by Robin Casajian
House of Healing is an encouragement to prisoners that provides a formula for behavioral change, respect, and dignity for inmates and reformed offenders. According to the author of House of Healing, prison life can result in a good payoff is inmates use their time wisely. The inmates are taught how to develop deep insight and mental calmness while in prison to gain skills and balance their life in prison and after release. Even for prisoners who are serving life sentences, the state of mind is the most important thing to improve because it determines how prisoners feel and how they are prepared to deal with the daily life in prison (Casarjian, 1996). A critical analysis of the House of Healing helps in knowing important counseling ideas that can be used to encourage and rehabilitate prisoners as they serve their sentences and as they are received back to the community.
Stress management techniques are one of the most important ideas for inmates because they encourage them to accept their new way of life and use the opportunity to advance in careers rather than losing hope in their future life. Stress management offers the inmates a comfortable mindset that helps them to deal with anger and frustration. It is true that some people find themselves in prisons through unjust means and this makes them develop a long-term ager about the judicial system. Stress management for inmates is said to be the most common problem in prisons and makes it difficult for inmates to reform.

Stressed inmates often fail to understand the reason for being in prison and usually term the instance as a total punishment instead of taking it as a room for change (Casarjian, 1996).
Prisoners are encouraged to engage in social activities while at the prison and participate in team building. Social groups in prisons assist the inmates to transit from a prison life into a normal life outside the docks and motivate the inmates to hope for better future. It is important to understand that prisoners undergo a period of self-denial during their early times in the prison and a faster acceptance of oneself is attained when the stress in them is relieved through proper counseling and educating the inmates. Stress management techniques involve all activities in a prison that are centered towards education, growth, rehabilitation and welfare of the inmates (Joseph, 2010). Some activities that are considered punishment also assist in stress management of the inmates. For instance, engaging prisoners in physical exercises and participating in unpaid carpentry helps the inmates to have a good state of mind and also learn new skills while in prison. Exposure to aspects real outside life is a psychological treatment for inmates since they think less about activities of the outside world and concentrate on the good things being offered in the prisons.
Self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others is another important counseling program for inmates that helps them accept and move on with their normal life. The House of Healing offers good advice for prisoners to forgive those who contributed to their imprisonment and also forgive those whom they offended before being imprisoned. Once in prison, there is no need to think about revenge to those who contribute to imprisonment of others. This mentality does not portray any change for those who are imprisoned and can lead to another jail term in case the acquitted offender resorts to revenge (Casarjian, 1996). Advice about forgiveness is what keeps most prisoners Godly and ready to reform. Without forgiveness, the goal of incarcerating offenders is not usually achieved, and prisons gain a bad name.
In encouraging forgiveness, prison departments should also forgive. This can imply that the goal of imprisonment is not about reforming through punishment. At this time and age, brutality in prisons should not hold a place since it only makes prisoners more hardcore than before and when such prisoners complete their term, they seek revenge or engage in worse activities than before they were imprisoned (Yusuf & Mundia, 2014). In this context, the essence of counseling according to the House of Healing should incorporate the aspect of forgiveness to the offenders and ensure that the transform to the positive side of things rather than being a problem to the society after being released.
Counselors and chaplains use the house of healing as a reference for complementing their treatment programs and establish the most effective program for designing a new program for counseling inmates. Mental health and substance abuse counselors find the concepts in the book very useful in designing their course of action in helping the addicted prisoners (Casarjian, 1996). House of Healing is, in itself, a full course for inmates about they well-being in prison and consoling programs increase the usefulness of the book by giving proper guidance to the inmates as per the author’s perspective. It is important for the counselors to base the principles of this book in a prison context so that they can distinguish prison counseling from other forms of counseling programs elsewhere.
This book is not only essential to the counselors in prisons but essential to offenders themselves. Serving inmates can find the importance of this book in through self-evaluation in prison, and this grants them ideas for dealing with stress. Through reading the books, the inmates can feel the authenticity of the advice provided by the author especially if they had ended to ignore the advice of physical counselors whom they may have taken their issues person and ignored their advice for personal subjectivity. The book can serve as an easy reference for prisoners who want to manage the various issues affecting prisoners. The prisoners should, in fact, make use of the books’ contents in their everyday prison life evaluation and keep the contents of the book into the application.
The positive side of criminal justice program is that it assists individual inmates to continue with the normal living while serving their sentences. The counseling gives them hope and strength to manage the prison conditions. It is through the counseling that the inmates respect the prison authority and act in accordance with the requirement of the prison. Through counseling, the inmates are well informed about the importance of being humble while serving their sentences since this can grant them an opportunity for pardon before the completion of their serving time (Keinan & Malach-Pines, 2007). The counseling does not only assist the inmates on the way to live while in prison but, it also assists them in the outside world for those who would be released. It teaches them about reconciliation and dealing with the difficulties of acceptance back into the society.
Prison counseling programs, however, have their negativities on the lives of individual inmates and the prison life and a whole. For instance, counseling may tend to give inmates too much confidence about their stay in prison, and if circumstances in prison become worse than expected, then the inmates can lose confidence in the program and even lose more hope for living. Prison counseling programs might be meaningless of for prisoners who are expected to face the hangman. They can do nothing important in prison except to prepare for their deaths. Prison counseling programs also have to be conducted with much care since prison authorities can manipulate the trust given to the counselors to perpetuate their personal interests (Litchtenwalter, Garase & Barker, 2010). The counseling programs can also be problematic in the instances where they tend to stress on the rights of prisoners ad this can lead to incidences such as food strikes by prisoners in a request for their rights.
Stress management program appears to the most powerful idea in prison counseling because it carries along the life of inmates in prisons. When stress is well managed for prisoners, they enjoy many other benefits and serve peaceful sentences than any other programs being offered to prisoners. It is also important to note that stress management programs also incorporate aspects of forgiveness and justice and this keeps prisoners well informed about their stay and the life after imprisonment. Prisons should foster counseling programs that emphasize on stress management and social well-being of inmates to ensure a just society both inside and outside the prisons. The society should also wake up and recognize the need to term prisoners as normal people who deserve the same opportunities as those outside the prisons. Also, proper education should be offered to people about the law and justice so as to reduce the high number of people in the modern day prisons.
References
Casarjian, R. (1996). Houses of Healing: A Prisioner’s Guide to Inner Power and Freedom. J.
Johnson, B. West, & N. Raiselle (Eds.). Lionheart.
Joseph, T. D. (2010). Counselling for productive employment of prisons inmate. European
journal of educational studies, 2(3).
Keinan, G., & Malach-Pines, A. (2007). Stress and burnout among prison personnel sources,
Outcomes, and intervention strategies. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34(3), 380-398.
Litchtenwalter, S., Garase, M. L., & Barker, D. B. (2010). Evaluation of the house of healing: An
alternative to female incarceration. J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare, 37, 75.
Yusuf, N. M., & Mundia, L. (2014). The Status of Counseling in Brunei Prisons: Qualitative
Exploratory Case Study. Journal of Sociological Research, 5(1), 24-39.