ESSAY

CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
A Revisionist History

STANLEY L. BRODSKY
The University of Alabama

This revision of the history of correctional psychology begins in the 1960s, a time during which psychologists in correctional
institutions had little influence or occupational preparation. Within the American Association of Correctional Psychology at the
time, four themes emerged: custody-treatment struggles, job security problems, the development of treatment taxonomies, and
professional fragmentation. The field of practice and knowledge was redefined in part in the early 1970s, when the Lake Wales
conferences led to new roles and identities for psychologists in corrections and criminal justice and when the journal Criminal
Justice and Behavior was started. The current state of correctional psychology stands out in contrast to these early years in the
forms of increased academic preparation, more professionalism, and the emergence of the practitioner scholar.

Keywords: correctional psychology; corrections; psychology history; prisoner treatment

P rofessional societies typically operate in the here and now, with concerns of member-
ship, budgets, publications, leadership, and annual meetings dominating the agenda.
Yet almost all of these concerns are seated as much in the past events and experiences of
organizations as in the present, just as nations have their current concerns seated deeply, but
often not obviously, in their history. The examination of the history of the health profes-
sions and their professional societies and guilds serves the purpose of identifying both the
historical foundations and the rolling momentum that brings the professions to the present
(Burrage & Torstendahl, 1990; Evetts, 2003). One more clearly understands contemporary
medicine when one is aware of the black plague, the great typhoid and influenza epidemics
(Bordelais, 2006), and the contributions of Ignac Semmelweis (Nuland, 2004) and
Alexander Fleming (Maurois, 1959). So, too, it goes in correctional psychology.
Curt Bartol and Naomi Freeman (2005) have written a history of the American
Association of Correctional Psychology (AACP). In this thoughtful and carefully docu-
mented history, Bartol and Freeman sought to describe the early days of the association and
to document the history of the AACP newsletters and of Criminal Justice and Behavior, the
journal of the association. Most of their historical review is dedicated to AACP publica-
tions. In this article, I add to their historical reconstruction of the AACP newsletters and

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stanley L. Brodsky,
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0348; e-mail: sbrodsky@bama.ua.edu.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 34, No. 6, June 2007 862-869
DOI: 10.1177/0093854807301993
© 2007 American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

862
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 Brodsky / CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE AACP 863

journal; however, I also focus on the development of correctional psychology itself and
how these issues relate to the AACP.

A BACKGROUND IN CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

I have had a good viewing platform from which to look at correctional psychology and
the AACP. I became a member of the AACP in 1964 and have continued as a member since
then. In 1964, with my new PhD in hand, and commissioned as an officer in the Army
Medical Service Corps, I was assigned to be head of the Psychology Division of the
Directorate of Mental Health at the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. Up to 15 enlisted men with graduate or undergraduate degrees in
psychology were assigned to work in the psychology division as well as Annette Brodsky,
then my wife, who also worked in that division as a commissioned officer. My 3 years at
the USDB shaped my career and my involvement in the AACP and perhaps helped to shape
correctional psychology as well.
Like most prisons of the day, the USDB placed psychologists in a difficult role, with
contentious struggles about the balance between treatment and custody priorities. At the
USDB in the mid-1960s, psychologists and psychiatrists were ill at ease for a number of
reasons. The Vietnam War was intensifying. Many prisoners were incarcerated for deser-
tion. Tension existed between the older, career military police (MP) officers who were in
charge of the USDB and the younger, recently educated mental health professionals who
were serving 3- or 4-year tours of duty.
With the caveat that enough time has passed for memory to be suspect, let me report on
the events then transpiring in many U.S. prisons. Mental health professionals at the USDB
were mostly officers who were required to be officer of the day about every 10th day.
During this time, they made decisions about limited use of the segregation unit, decisions
that frequently displeased the career MP officers. During the work day, prisoners were
simultaneously instructed to stay at institutional work assignments and to report for partic-
ipation in mental health programs. There was resistance among mental health profession-
als to the absolute and pervasive dominance of the custodial staff. As a consequence of the
resistance, some psychiatrists were sent to Vietnam as a punitive assignment. Other mental
health professionals, including me, were threatened with courts-martial for carrying out
professional duties that competed with military and custodial demands. Two-hour-long
mental health staff meetings began every workday, meetings in which the apparently para-
noid director of the mental health unit elicited controversial statements that were secretly
tape-recorded and played to other institutional staff members. The director appeared to
have broken into staff offices to go through files and to eavesdrop on telephone calls.
Every prison at the time had its own variations on these difficulties; these instances were
not atypical. For all of the custodial resistance to treatment activities, a polite hands-off atti-
tude was maintained toward research activities. I authored a series of studies about prisoners’
adaptations to the institution (e.g., Brodsky, 1968a, 1968b; Brodsky & Komaridis, 1968)
and coedited a book about military prisons (Brodsky & Eggleston, 1970). In his chapter in
our book, Hankoff (1970) reported on his observations at five military penal institutions.
He described the organizational structure as a rigid military hierarchy, in which the staff
was controlling, sadistic, and antirehabilitative. Hankoff concluded that psychiatric care

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864 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

and treatment of personnel would be the preferred professional pathways to improve treat-
ment and well-being of prisoners.
Despite their critical tenor, the research and publishing activities of correctional psy-
chologists in this era were viewed by prison administrators with the same passive tolerance
many people have toward a stray dog or cat; as long as the animal stays to itself and is not
too annoying, it is welcome to stay around and perhaps to be fed.

AACP MEETINGS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS’ ANGST IN THE 1960S AND 1970S

Joel Dvoskin, Erin Spiers, and I have prepared a history of how correctional mental
health programs emerged from the 20-year zeitgeist that started in the 1950s of indetermi-
nate sentencing, defective delinquent laws, and psychoanalytic efforts to promote offender
treatment (Dvoskin, Spiers, & Brodsky, 2006). AACP annual meetings were usually held
in conjunction with the American Correctional Association. At the annual meetings,
members reported difficulties similar to those of mine at the USDB. With the exception of
psychologists in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, psychologists working in American prisons
reported organizational impediments to conducting meaningful assessments and offering
meaningful treatment. At both state and federal prisons, little tolerance was shown for psy-
chologists who publicly demonstrated even a modicum of disaffection or who gave media
interviews departing from unequivocal praise for institutional procedures, events, and dis-
cipline. Every year, some psychologists reported the “shutout.” After giving what seemed
to them to be innocuous statements to the press, or assertively pushing for initiation of a
new treatment program in the prison, they would come to work, only to find they were
barred from admission to the institution. Their possessions were boxed up and waiting for
them at the gate, and the psychologists were informed they were no longer employed. No
due process was available, and no appeals were allowed.
At a few institutions, workload and working conditions were egregious. At one
Midwestern maximum-security prison with 7,000 inmates, former AACP president Asher
Pacht and I were brought in as consultants. Once there, we discovered that the previously
unstated but actual task was to critique the assessment work of the sole psychologist, who
was responsible for assessing between 25 and 50 newly admitted inmates every day. This
psychologist used astrological signs as his major method of coming to diagnostic conclu-
sions. After the initial shock of what he was doing wore off, we concluded that psycho-
astrology was as good as anything else that might be done with his impossible and
crushing load of intellectual and personality assessments. We did propose a clinical
service center for this prison and prisons in general, in which a range of integrated and
meaningful services could be offered and in which sufficient staff would be employed
(Brodsky & Pacht, 1974). The administrators of the institution that had retained us ignored
our proposal.
AACP meetings of the 1960s and 1970s dwelled in part on these kinds of concerns.
AACP members served as a support group to prison psychologists in distress. In addition,
presentations about the Herbert Quay and Marguerite Warren treatment taxonomies, and
the Patuxent mental health prison, all with explicit commitments to treatment ideologies,
occupied much of the meeting time (for example, see Quay’s [1987] discussion of institu-
tional treatment as well as Brodsky [1972/1973]).

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 Brodsky / CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE AACP 865

FRAGMENTATION

What was palpably true in early AACP meetings was a felt need to connect with other
correctional psychologists. Most psychologists in prisons were isolated, often serving as
the only psychologist and sometimes as the only mental health professional in the institu-
tion. Some prison psychologists presented at conferences using prisoner argot. George
Levy, a longtime psychologist at the Colorado State Penitentiary at Canon City, was a
notable example, speaking of new prisoners as fish, and of psychologists as bug-doctors.
Many efforts of psychologists to connect with each other and exchange information were
unsuccessful and fragmented. There was much employment turnover in prison psycholo-
gists, and many AACP members vanished after a few meetings. At the meetings them-
selves, only a few people were willing to serve in key roles in the organization. The
newsletters were episodic, often delayed by their low priority at the prison print shops that
had AACP newsletters at the bottom of the printing queue.
The fragmentation arose not only from lack of continuity but also from the geographical
and institutional diversity of the members. Despite common themes and concerns, little
professionalism or constructive focus appeared. Some sessions at the annual meetings were
devoted to testing and others to treatment. However, essentially every conference program
submission that was written in complete sentences was accepted, substance of the submis-
sions notwithstanding. About 100 psychologists gathered every year.

AACP: FATHERHOOD AND THE FAMILY

Bartol and Freeman (2005) wrote, “Stanley Brodsky was, of course, not only the found-
ing editor of Criminal Justice & Behavior, but arguably could be considered the father of
modern correctional psychology” (p. 125). Fatherhood is a strong assertion. At the least, it
is reasonable to conclude that I have been a member of the family for a long time and, for
two decades, a friend of the family. Let me describe how I became involved. In 1968, I was
29, and much junior to most AACP members, when Art Kandel of the Patuxent Institution
and an early AACP leader, asked me to run for AACP president. I accepted the invitation.
As I recall, there was no opponent, so my election to be president for the 2-year term from
1969 to 1971 was neither competitive nor a remarkable achievement. Still, I participated in
three events from that era that should be mentioned.

1. The Lake Wales conferences. The Lakes Wales meetings were seminal events in
rethinking the nature and activities of psychologists working in corrections. Even though I
was in charge, I was not the initiator. Art Kandel and Saleem Shah had been speaking for
some time about the need for a conference on psychologists’ roles in corrections and crim-
inal justice. Because I was president, available, and naïve as to the amount of work
involved, Shah and Kandel anointed me as the organizer of the conference. Saleem Shah
was one of the influential figures in molding professional psychology in response to
demands of the law (Brodsky, 1995; Roth, 1995), and he provided the conceptual and prac-
tical force for the conference, as well. He mobilized funds from NIMH, where he worked;
from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration; and from the Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The Florida estate on which the conferences were held

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866 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

was owned by the American Foundation, which also owned the Bock Singing Tower on the
site. The sculptured trees and landscape of the American Foundation estate had been
planned by Frederick Laws Olmstead, the landscape designer responsible for Central Park.
When up to 30 people, including many prison psychologists, gathered three times in 1970
and 1971 in the elegant Spanish-style mansion in Lake Wales, a sense of distance and per-
spective separated us from the daily and frustrating demands of prison work.
The Lake Wales conferences brought together representatives of federal agencies, acad-
emics, full-time researchers, practitioners, and other people who sought to rock the boat or
steer it in another direction. Perhaps the most notable participant was Judge David Bazelon,
chief judge of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, author of the Durham (1954) decision, and the
jurist most involved in addressing the interface of law and psychological practice. He was
fierce. With passionate and riveting oratory, he accused psychologists in corrections of
being selfish. It is time, he scolded us, that you start doing good for prisoners instead of
doing well for yourselves. The correctional psychologists who had been fired or harassed,
and who had not done well for themselves, were not there to speak; successful institutional
practitioners, scholars, and federal agency representatives were there. Saleem Shah pro-
vided the connective tissue for this diverse group, and did much more. He argued that psy-
chologists in corrections had to go beyond their discipline-centric concerns and address the
broader social context and concerns. The product of the conferences was a book titled
Psychologists in the Criminal Justice System (Brodsky, 1972/1973), which included three
chapters contributed by conference participants. The grant supporting these conferences
provided for an initial printing of 5,000 copies of this book in 1972, and the University of
Illinois Press reprinted and published the book a year later.

2. Criminal Justice and Behavior. Starting a new journal is a complex undertaking. After
a period of corresponding with publishers, a tentative agreement was reached with Sage.
The nascent journal was to be called Criminal Justice and Behavior: An International
Journal (CJB). The publisher insisted that the journal be subtitled “An International
Journal,” convinced that that subtitle would promote sales from other countries. I reluc-
tantly acquiesced, doubtful that many subscriptions would come from international sales.
The mechanics and logistics of setting up the journal called for me to make repeated trips
to Beverly Hills, not as charming a destination for this novice editor as it might sound.1
Establishing this journal served an organizational purpose for AACP and for correctional
psychology. Before CJB, the organization was a loose confederation of people without a
major scholarly focus. Individuals who wanted to publish in correctional psychology or,
indeed, to read about correctional psychology, looked to criminological journals or clinical
psychology journals.
With CJB, correctional psychology had the potential to develop a scholarly identity. One
of the initial problems was the discovery of how little scholarship was in the field. There
were studies that dealt with prisoners, prisons, and psychological services to offenders. Yet
in manuscript submissions, there was only a minimal effort to provide a conceptual frame
of reference or programmatic research studies.
What is not obvious to professionals who read scholarly journals is how the
acceptance/rejection rate is driven by the publisher’s allocation of pages. CJB started as a
quarterly with 96 printed pages to be filled every 3 months. When a new journal is started, at
first many manuscripts that are submitted have been rejected elsewhere or are incomplete in

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 Brodsky / CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE AACP 867

important ways. Thus, the first year of CJB was made up partly by solicited articles from
scholars I knew.

3. The Kraus publishing contract. In the early 1970s, I had no idea that I would think
like a historian, until the Kraus publishing company agreed to reprint all of the back issues
of The Correctional Psychologist in a bound volume. Publishers are driven by profit
motives, and I was puzzled why a commercial publisher believed that libraries and indi-
viduals would purchase this volume of association newsletters. The book was published
and promptly disappeared into the abyss of unwanted and unsold books. I have searched
unsuccessfully to find any copy of the Kraus book now (my copy was passed to subsequent
association presidents and was eventually lost). I also have unsuccessfully searched for
reprints of early issues of The Correctional Psychologist, with no accurate hits for the
Kraus volume. In the meantime, Kraus apparently merged with another company to form
the Kraus-Thompson publishing company. As of the present writing, I have been unable to
contact them, and other publishers I have contacted believe that Kraus has gone out of busi-
ness. The loss of this historical source is not easily explained.

THE AACP/AACFP AND CORRECTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Let us shift forward in time and reexamine the issues of the 1960s and 1970s from
today’s perspective. The fragmentation of correctional psychology and the demeaning of
correctional psychologists have mostly disappeared. They have been replaced in many
states and provinces and in the Federal Bureau of Prisons by career prison psychologists,
usually licensed; knowledgeable about the scientific foundations of their work; and accus-
tomed to regular, thoughtful, and productive continuing education workshops. Four
decades ago, no correctional psychologists had completed courses or curricula addressing
law violation, prisoners, or law. Now it is common to have done so.
The treatment-custody struggles are clearly not as antagonistic now as they were. In the
past, successful and programmatic mental health treatment efforts appeared infrequently
in prisons. Now, they have become common enough that an annotated bibliography of
mental health treatment for offenders had more than 1,300 annotations (Van Whitlock &
Lubin, 1999).
The AACP became, first, the American Association of Correctional Psychology, and,
more recently, the American Association of Correctional & Forensic Psychology (AACFP).
It is no longer the only organization for psychologists in corrections. Correctional psychol-
ogists often identify more with psychology than with corrections, and many have their pri-
mary professional affiliations with the American Psychological Association (APA), Division
41 of APA (the American Psychology-Law Society), or with the Criminal Justice Section of
APA Division 18 (Psychologists in Public Service), in addition to or instead of AACFP.
No single source indicates how many psychologists now work in corrections, with cor-
rections sometimes strictly defined as in prisons or loosely defined as including community
programs for convicted or diverted offenders. Using the latter definition, my best judgment
is that more psychologists now work in corrections in just the state of California than did
in the nation 40 years ago. Many more correctional psychologists are publishing than ever
before, a reflection of emerging scholarly activities and values.

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868 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

THE PRACTITIONER-SCHOLAR

A contemporary development in correctional psychology has been the appearance of the

practitioner-scholar, defined as individuals working in corrections with assigned roles as
clinical psychologists, but also explicitly committed to maintaining a program of system-
atic research. This development may have arisen because of the practitioner-scholars in
forensic hospitals starting in the 1980s, with Norman Poythress as an exemplary model. At
the same time, Martin Bohn (Bohn, Carbonell, & Megargee, 1995), working in corrections,
also worked jointly with academics to develop a new MMPI-based taxonomy of offenders.
Psychologists in Canadian prisons have been prominent as practitioner-scholars, including
Paul Gendreau (1979), who subsequently moved from a correctional institution position to
an academic position at the University of New Brunswick.
One encouraging development has been the increased success of Criminal Justice and
Behavior. The standard measure of the importance of a journal is the extent to which its arti-
cles are frequently cited in other publications. The quantitative measure of the frequency of
citations is the Impact Factor (IF) published by the Web of Science for all journals. The IF
for CJB for 2005 was an impressive .97, or an average of .97 citations per published article.

CONCLUSION

Correctional psychologists of four decades ago would be flabbergasted to see the essen-
tial and valued roles of psychologists in contemporary corrections. The few relevant expe-
riences in graduate education of the time (Brodsky & Fowler, 1978) have morphed into
dozens of graduate school programs and concentrations. Predoctoral internship training is
offered now in many correctional institutions. Full-time assignments for psychologists con-
ducting research are seen. Criminal Justice and Behavior has succeeded at a level I never
envisioned when starting it. Every prison system has treatment programs for severely dis-
ordered inmates. The quality of psychological personnel and services is better than ever
before. If only these achievements were enough. They are not.
Crowding, violence, and iatrogenic illness are still present. Psychologists are treated
well. Prisoners are not. If we revisit the Bazelon challenge of 35 years ago, we may still be
found wanting. Prisons have increasingly become long-term confinement facilities for the
mentally disordered as well as the modestly deviant. We still have a long way to go.

NOTE
1. One by-product of the repeated visits to Beverly Hills was meeting with Jay and Mae Ziskin at the time the first edi-
tion of Coping With Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony was published (Ziskin, 1970). Because relatives had told them
that publishers took the bulk of profits, the Ziskins formed the Law & Psychology Press to sell the book directly. When I was
visiting them, their home study was filled with piles of Coping that they were boxing to mail to customers.

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