Lakeview

You could call it the Shock Capital of the World, because Lakeview is the largest shock incarceration facility on earth. It is not only a huge program facility for 650 male and female shock participants, but is the statewide reception and screening center for all program applicants. It is also the central staff training agency for the shock program statewide, administering training on-site as well as coordinating training at other shock facilities.

Lakeview is approximately 50 miles south of Buffalo in far western New York, about a quarter-mile from the Lake Erie shore. The 126-acre, wedge-shaped campus is bordered on one long side by the CSX railroad tracks and by the New York State Thruway on the other. The property is split into two sections, a main campus and an annex. Housing for the 1,000-plus inmates is in barracks-style dormitories, with a small number of prison cells. A 32-cell Special Housing Unit is used as a short-term lock-up for inmates who break prison rules.

Lakeview also includes an S-Block with 100 double-occupancy cells for inmates found guilty of serious misbehavior at other prisons and sent here for disciplinary segregation.

Although it is fenced off from the rest of the institution and unconnected to the shock program, its presence here serves to send a message to the shock inmates, all of whom are first-timers to DOCS: Lakeview shock is not the whole of the New York state prison system - we have maximum-security, too, so think before you abuse the privilege you are being offered here.

Treatment in a military context

Shock is a correctional program with a military theme. Lakeview's inmates are organized in "platoons" of approximately 50 men or women who march, calling cadence, almost everywhere they go. For six months, shock inmates rise early for calisthenics and a five-mile run, and go from there to a high-density, non-stop schedule of school, therapy, military drill and strenuous work assignments.

Drill instructors, employing a no-nonsense disciplinary style, control the inmates' movements down to the finest detail. Beds must be made just so and lockers maintained exactly as prescribed. Inmates must be properly groomed and attired at all times - in white shirt and tie for school and counseling, in greens for other activities. Inmates wishing to speak to staff must ask permission, and must begin and end every utterance with "sir" or "ma'am." Inattention, carelessness, tardiness, sloth, "attitude" and other departures from expectations are corrected on the spot with "learning experiences," such as moving a rock pile, dropping for eight-count pushups or carrying a log around all day.

It is this "boot camp" aspect that gets the media coverage. But at Lakeview, only 25 percent of the inmates' time is spent in military activity, and that one-quarter includes not just drill and ceremony but also physical training, movement to and from other activities and time spent at meals, which are eaten in formation. Three-quarters of the Lakeview program is devoted to academic and vocational study, physical labor (either on the grounds or doing public service work in neighboring communities), and treatment consisting of formal addiction education and counseling in the Department's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment (ASAT) curriculum, supplemented by regular attendance at AA and NA meetings. Treatment is also delivered in community meetings and other activities of the Department's Network program, emphasizing responsible living through goal-setting and decision-making techniques.

But the military format is not merely packaging. Though directly present only a few hours a day, it is always felt. It sets the mood and the ground rules for the entire program. The strict discipline gets inmates' attention and teaches them to focus on the task at hand. It teaches the inmate to suppress habits of resistance to authority that in other settings frustrate the efforts of teachers and counselors. And it is the military spirit that gives shock its snap, crispness and sparkle, driving the inmates rapidly from one activity to another, so that a great deal is accomplished in the short, six-month shock tour.

Despite its vaunted severity, the military component is not the toughest part of shock. For six months, most inmates can handle getting yelled at. They can get used to the pushups. They can swallow their pride and conform. The tough part of shock is treatment.

Treatment is personal, and the inmates are likely to see it as an assault on their character, personality and values. Treatment strips away inmates' defenses and leads them to re-examine and, it is hoped, to give up much of what they think is their identity: drinking and drugging, the streets, the hustle, the gang all of them addictions, all of friends, the criminal lifestyle -them destructive.

Initially, inmates probably see shock as a demand for unconditional surrender of self and control. It isn't, really. Overtime, inmates begin to understand that they are like boxers in training, doing what they're told because that's how you get ready for the big fight. Shock is a conditioning program, designed to produce more fully developed human beings who will be able to set goals and stay the course no matter what obstacles the world throws in their way.

This is the paradox of shock: that it is only through temporary surrender of self and control that one gains real self-control and, with it, adult independence, autonomy and individuality.

From boot camps to shock

Though there are suggestions of shock in the military structure developed more than a century ago at the Elmira Reformatory, the boot camp movement is a relatively new phenomenon in American prisons.

Correctional boot camps - so named for their resemblance to basic training in the military -sprang up in several southern states in the early 1980's. The camps got a great deal of attention. The use of strict military discipline to instill pride, respect and responsibility in of fenders represented a new and promising alternative to warehousing in traditional "big house" prison settings. Because boot camp sentences were relatively short, they also promised to cut the costs associated with the "war on drugs" and rising incarceration rates. And the boot camps had public support. People loved the idea of defiant gang members transformed into clean-cut youths, marching off smartly every morning to a hard day's work.

A very attractive package, from almost any perspective. DOCS and the state Legislature began to look at boot camps in the mid-'80's. Before signing on, however, New York would make some substantive additions to the boot camp model. While keeping the military packaging, DOCS added content -in the form of a compact, intense program of education, drug abuse treatment and character development.

Legislation authorizing shock in New York was passed in 1987. The program was limited to young, non-violent offenders, under the age of 24, who had not previously served time in state prison. Inmates who successfully completed the rigorous six-month shock program would be eligible for parole immediately - on average, a year before they would have been eligible without going through shock. That brought about a reduction in the cost of operating the prison system.

In September 1987, the state's first platoon of shock inmates entered a former DOCS forestry camp at Monterey. A second shock facility was created the next year at Summit. So successful was shock deemed, both in financial and treatment terms, that the Legislature voted to increase participation by allowing 24- and 25-year olds in the program. A women's shock dorm was established at Summit in 1988. Shock facilities at Moriah and Butler opened in early 1989 and, that year, the upper age limit was again raised, enlarging the pool of potential participants by opening it to inmates up to and including the age 29.

Lakeview re-designated for shock

A bigger pool would mean two things. First, additional shock beds would be required. Second, a more efficient screening process would have to be devised, preferably at a shock site. Handily, a suitable site would soon be available: a new prison was already under construction near Lake Erie.

Lakeview had been planned as a medium-security, general confinement facility on the prototype, "cookie-cutter" design that characterized prison construction in New York in the 1980's. Outside the perimeter fence were an administration building, water tower and maintenance buildings. Inside were a visitors' building, a food service building, a program building for school and counseling, an activities building with a gymnasium, a medical services building, a laundry and state shop building and a greenhouse. There also were seven housing units, each walled down the middle to make two 54-bed dormitories, plus a 32-cell special housing unit, for a capacity of 788.

As Lakeview was nearing completion, shock incarceration staff was recruited and trained. The first 54 inmates arrived on September 11, 1989. That same month, the Department purchased an adjacent 32-acre piece of land on which an annex would be built. Like the main compound, the annex was originally conceived for other than shock purposes. It was intended as one of several centers serving a new Comprehensive Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment (CASAT) program.

The annex, with its own perimeter fence, administration building, recreation and program buildings and three housing units, was completed in 1990, but the planned CASAT program never got under way. Contract negotiations with a private sector treatment provider were protracted and finally abandoned when a fiscal crisis forced the state government to cut costs. With the prison population still rising, the Department was in no position to leave the beds vacant while it waited out the fiscal crisis. The annex could be, and immediately was, put to good use by Lakeview's screening unit.

In May 1992, the Department transferred the women's shock unit at Summit to Lakeview. Lakeview was larger, and its separate housing buildings were better suited to a coed program than the interconnecting units at Summit. Additionally, the more comprehensive medical unit at Lakeview was better equipped to provide the higher level of services generally required by a female population.

Shock training center

Shock's record of success is due to the high quality of its personnel and to consistent program delivery over a period of 14 years. Both depend on a solid training program.

Lakeview is the training site for all the state's shock facilities - Monterey, Moriah and Summit as well as Lakeview - and for staff of the Willard Drug Treatment Campus (a three-month, shock-style alternative to imprisonment for judicially-selected drug offenders as well as for parolees returned to custody as a result of relapsing). Shock training is conducted either at Lakeview or at Willard, a former state psychiatric institution on Seneca Lake with extensive grounds and usable buildings well-suited to large group activities.

All shock facility employees must complete the four-week training program. The training is essentially a condensed version of the shock program for inmates. The training day begins with a physical training session, with drill practice after lunch. Trainees receive an orientation to military courtesy and ceremony, participate in community meetings and confrontation groups, learn the 12 steps of AA and NA and other elements of ASAT, and become thoroughly familiar with the philosophy and workings of Network. Like the inmates, the trainees are given a "word of the day" for vocabulary enrichment. Each day ends with formation into companies and a formal dismissal. The session concludes with a formal graduation ceremony.

So good is the reputation of New York's shock program that Lakeview is frequently asked to train personnel from other jurisdictions who have started, or wish to set up, programs modeled on ours. Staff from Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, Oregon, New York City and other correctional agencies have gone through the four-week experience, indistinguishable from New York personnel save for their uniforms. Aside from training, Lakeview has accommodated exploratory groups from other states and nations including England, France and Australia.

Screening and selection

Since it opened in 1989, Lakeview has served as the statewide shock recruitment center. Potential participants - inmates who appear to meet the statutory eligibility criteria respecting age and crime - are identified at the DOCS reception centers (Downstate, Elmira, Ulster and Bedford Hills) and immediately sent to Lakeview for screening and selection.

The process was centralized to maximize participation in this cost-saving program. Before the Lakeview site became available, when screening and selection was done at the reception centers, the enrollment rate was less than 40 percent. Administrators reasoned that if recruitment were conducted on-site, where inmates could see the program in action, and that if it were presented and explained by experienced shock officers and counselors, there would be more sign-ups, coupled with fewer drop-outs by inmates who were temperamentally unsuited or poorly informed of what to expect. Since centralization at Lakeview, proportions have reversed: more than 60 percent of the 5,000 or so candidates screened every year are approved by the Department, and almost 19 of every 20 approved inmates elect to enroll.

Typically, a busload of 30-60 inmates is received in the late afternoon and held overnight in A-Dorm. The next morning, the candidates' legal eligibility is verified. Shock inmates now must be under the age of 40, serving their first state prison term and eligible for parole in no more than three years. They cannot have been convicted of violent felony offenses, sex offenses, or escapes or absconding from custody. Their records are further checked for evidence of sex offenses or violence or large-scale drug trafficking that may have been masked by plea bargaining.

Additionally, the candidates are medically screened to assure they can withstand the physical demands of shock. On average, two out of five candidates are found legally ineligible or disapproved for participation.

In the afternoon, security and program personnel talk to the inmates still remaining after the morning's screening, giving an overview^ of shock and answering questions. The inmates are then given the option of signing up for shock. Some decline. The headlong pace, the instant submission to orders and the physical demands of shock are not for everybody. Most (94.5 percent last year) take the offer. Freedom in six months is of course a strong inducement, but so is the opportunity for change. Many inmates wish they could escape "using" and the criminal lifestyle, but know they cannot do it without the external discipline that shock will impose on them.

Enlistees are placed in a "shock-ready" dormitory until beds are available, either at Lakeview or another shock facility, for a new platoon to be formed and begin the program. Decliners and inmates weeded out in screening are placed in annex beds to await transfer to a general confinement facility.

Who dares, wins

The slogan, "Who dares, wins," is seen on walls and posters throughout Lakeview. It is an apt motto for a shock facility. It takes daring and courage to give up a dependency; to abandon the habits, beliefs and attitudes of a lifetime; to relinquish independence and submit to outside control.

"Do it," Lakeview dares its inmates. "Give up drugs, alcohol and just about everything else that you think makes your life go. Give up, for just six months, your autonomy and independence. Do it our way and we will show you a way to a better life."

Take the dare, Lakeview says, and you can be a winner!

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