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The retraining center at Colorado's Lowry Air Force Base now spends $25 a day per prisoner, compared with $10.45 in federal prisons and $1.50 at the New Orleans Parish Prison. At Lowry, which boasts 144 assorted counselors for 220 prisoners, the retraining begins with a battery of psychological and educational tests, proceeds to freewheeling group-therapy sessions that discuss alcoholism, drugs and racism, then moves into academic or vocational programs. Lowry's atmosphere is so free that tales of prisoners' disbelief abound: to test the system, one skeptic walked off the base and waited for the MPs to converge. When none came, he meekly returned to his quarters, convinced of official good intentions.
Civilian prisoners would be equally surprised by "the castle"—the Navy brig in Portsmouth, N.H. To look after 480 inmates, it has 370 guards and other staff members, including three psychologists, four psychiatrists, and six chaplains. The white-towered castle is run by Marine Colonel Walter Domina, a cigar-smoking former fighter pilot who offers his prisoners a choice of 25 vocational-training programs. The prison library is stocked with 11,000 books; inmates are allowed to publish their own magazine, complete with girlie pictures, which they get from the Armed Forces Press Service. Since Domina took over last July, the chapel services have changed as well. "How can you expect a 20-year-old to listen to Onward, Christian Soldiers!" asks Domina. Last month Portsmouth enjoyed its first folk mass.
All is not perfect, of course, even at Portsmouth. Incorrigibles are still likely to land in "the hole": solitary confinement below ground in dank semidarkness. The Navy is also investigating reports that Portsmouth has a major drug-trafficking problem. But such black marks pale in comparison with the grim conditions at one of the military's least reformed prisons: the Army stockade at Mannheim, Germany.
Atypical Situation. Mannheim, commanded by Major Harry Crawford, houses 300 of the 425 G.I. prisoners in Europe and is almost a carbon copy of the worst civilian prison facilities in the U.S. Guarded by four watchtowers with spotlights, the stark brick structure is surrounded by two 7-ft.-high rows of barbed wire. Few if any prisoners at Mannheim are rehabilitated. Homosexuality is rampant and drugs abound. Tension between white and black inmates is so bad that guards simply let each group run its part of the jungle. Says one white inmate: "You can survive if you stay away from the brothers." Last month one white was cut across the face and chest by black prisoners wielding razor blades; another was raped by a gang of blacks.
Happily, the Mannheim situation is atypical for the 1971 military correctional system. More than half of Fort Riley's 18,000 Army retrainees, for example, are now either back on duty or have received honorable discharges. At the Air Force's Lowry retraining facility, 11.6% of the inmates return to duty. The Marines' return rate is even higher: 79.4%. The military may not have completely solved the mysteries of rehabilitation, but it has surely outperformed most civilian prisons.