Hitting It Out of the Park with Prison Reform

Hitting It Out of the Park with Prison Reform

By Thomas Peterlein

JRN 100 Stonehill New Staff Writer

Most people go to Fenway Park for baseball and hot dogs. Timothy App however goes to Fenway’s Boston Neighborhood for prison.

“Public safety through responsible integration,” said App. App is a teacher of criminology ethics at Stonehill College as well as an ex-employee of the prison system, well known for turning prisons around.

He said the guiding force behind his management style is his belief that society is best served when prisoners are released, providing they have been treated for their addictions and have been given job training so they can reenter the workforce.

App joined the prison system at 18 as a guard at a small prison, eventually getting promoted to deputy. Soon after he was promoted to warden and given a choice between two prisons: Park Drive Correctional Center next to Fenway Park, a prison with 28 escapes in the previous year, or a prison in northern Massachusetts “that was running like a top,” App said. He decided to do the sensible thing and chose the failing prison in Fenway Park.

“If it is that bad then it needs someone to change attitudes, and a kickass warden,” App said, who is now semi-retired and teaching at Stonehill College in Easton Mass.

Through his years of experience, App said he developed a philosophy of prison management that rests in part on the idea that those working in prisons need to understand and believe in the ability of people to change. They do believe in change, they must create programs to help promote that change, such as drug treatment, college classes, and job training. These are programs that will help integrate prisoners into society when they are released.

He said for prisons to meet their mission the people working in prisons must show respect for inmates and be positive role models. Those ideas and some of his others were focused around changing the environment of prisons to help facilitate rehabilitation. Rehabilitation refers to the idea that each prisoner should have their problems treated in prison before they are released to make sure they do not commit another crime.

When he first went to the Fenway prison App said he was struck with a culture of unprofessionalism and lack of attention to detail. He knew that he needed to change that.

The first step that he took to turn the prison around was to assess the lives of prisoners already housed at Fenway. The assessment would look at criminogenic factors, such as family life, drug addiction, gang affiliation, and other predictors of crime. He set up a similar system for all incoming prisoners as well in order to assign each prisoner to the rehabilitation program that would help them the most.

Some of these programs target different kinds of addictions like drug and alcohol abuse treatment programs. Others try to help prisoners get jobs upon releases such as college classes and job training programs.

App’s next step was to create an effective drug abuse treatment program within the prison. He said that is the most important program to run because treated drug addiction is the first and biggest step to rehabilitation after being released. The program along with random drug tests and searches lead to an almost drug-free prison within the year, he said.

App had succeeded in turning the prison around escapes dropped from 28 escapes annually to two, he said. During his time there he also decreased the illegal drug incidents to almost zero.

After the successes, App was promoted to a commissioner position in charge of 11 prisons in Massachusetts.

He was promoted to the position of commissioner of community corrections from 1990 to 2000, the first and longest appointment to that position. Although the prison no longer exists, App’s model for prisons is still persistent and used in some prisons throughout Massachusetts.