2010 MHCC CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO

2010 MHCC CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO: Highlights focus on community issues.


Richard Althouse, Ph.D.
President, IACFP

This year’s Mental Health in Corrections Consortium conference, sponsored by the Forest Institute, Adler, and Chicago schools of professional psychology, was held at the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel in downtown Chicago April 12th through 14th. I was privileged to MC the conference, and I can say that Jennifer Baker, and her assistant, Phyllis Beckman, did a great job of organizing this conference, including arranging for the plenary and luncheon speakers, workshops, and student poster awards.

Given that a number of states are faced with releasing thousands of prisoners back to their communities to help relieve overcrowding, reintegration challenges are now becoming more prominent in the research and corrections literature. That was no less true for this conference and its plenary speakers. Richard Hart spoke of how staff at the Chicago Salvation Army prepares its staff to work with mentally ill offenders returning to Chicago. David Delmonico and Elizabeth Griffin informed attendees about how to understand sex offenders who use the internet (an extremely eye-opening and information-packed presentation). Joel Dvoskin, in his provocative presentation “Psychology, Crime and Punishment: We couldn’t do it worse if we tried,” talked about how psychology has dropped the ball in helping corrections use well-known psychological principles in re-shaping offender behaviors.

The majority of workshops focused on sex offender issues or community safety concerns. Some participants were able to take a tour of the nearby Salvation Army facility and learn how this agency helps returning offenders, some of whom are mentally ill, reintegrate into the community. Others learned of a volunteer mentoring program in Toronto that monitored sex offenders 24/7 in the interests of community safety, or about how communities might use Regional Assessment Centers as alternatives to re-incarceration.

Attendees could also learn about a shift in conceptualizing treatment for sex offenders, replacing relapse prevention models with self-regulation combine with good-lives models.

The The MHCC conference is also well-known for its student poster contest, in which students of the various professional schools present posters summarizing research on selected topics of interest. I was among the three judges who selected the top 7 posters, and those students received a financial award. This year, six students received a $500 award, and one (Rich Mulrenin, from Forest Institute) a $1000 award. IACFP contributed funds to help sponsor these student awards.
All in all, it was a great conference, and plans are already underway for next year’s conference. The conference will again be in Chicago, and continue to focus on the latest issues and concerns of community reintegration.