Malingering is the act of an individual pretending that he or she sick, but in the actual sense, the person is healthy and okay. It can also be viewed as a purposeful production of falsely exaggerated psychological complaints with the goal of achieving something. It has been discovered that some inmates commit crimes due to drug influence, while others committed crimes to get money for drugs. Federal Bureau of Prisons has provided inmates with opportunities to get involved in drug treatment programs to help them recover from drug addiction. This paper seeks to elaborate more on the drug programs undertaken in prisons and challenges facing the program in terms of service delivery, for instance, the malingering of other inmates.
It is not essential to provide the drug addiction program to malingering inmates, reasons being, inmates seeking the program are in need not going for the actual counseling, but for the perks. I believe that this is a serious program that deserves utmost faith from those in need of its service. Moreover, it is wastage of both time and money and should be discouraged.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The first step is to keep your suspicion to yourself and conduct a complete evaluation of the suspected inmate. By doing this you are not likely to annoy the inmate, this will make it more comfortable and convenient for the uncovering of malingering evidence (Schwitters, 2016). You could provide a questionnaire or ask questions to report on issues related to drug abuse and the systems he/she is suffering from. It will give you the words you will need to get information on whether the symptoms are correct or not. Additional data may be collected from friends or relatives if the inmate had at any particular time used drugs or not (Shafie et al., 2018).
Interview time for an inmate can be prolonged; this would make the inmate tired resulting in his/her inability to malinger. It has been proved that this ability is impossible after 24 hours. Improbable or rare symptoms can also point a finger to a malingering inmate. Furthermore, close observation of the inmates’ malingerer’s presentation either, external or internal would significantly reveal the true condition of the suspect (Bark, 2014). In enrolling the inmates into an addiction treatment program, effective strategies are essential in enticing these inmates into the program. Providing inmates with housing is an excellent strategy as homelessness is an issue to many. By being promised of housing service after their jail terms ends, whereby they would first get enrolled in the addiction treatment program would be effective in enticing the inmates.
By not treating a drug offender is an unexploited opportunity which is supposed to improve both safety and public health. Through education rehabilitation, employment rehabilitation and counseling rehabilitation an incarcerated individual gets educated in many ways such that the inmate is far much better compared to how he or she was before being sentenced (Costopoulos et al., 2017). The disadvantage of offering counseling therapy for drug addiction to and a particular inmate is, after the individual has gone through the whole he or she returns to a general population. It is possible that the inmate can relapse due to a harmful environment (Galassi et al., 2015).
The advantages of group counseling are contrary to the last statement mentioned above. When many inmates undergo counseling it would be hard for them to go back to their drug addiction norms, hence a good environment for the counseling program. However, group counseling is also posed with challenges including, not every incarcerated individual is willing to get counseling services and gets hard for a willing inmate to get educated or counseled due to politics and peer pressure in the prison environment. Inmates also feel that the treatment being offered is part of their punishment hence the reluctance to get counseled (O'Hagan et al., 2017). Research has continuously shown that counseling for drug abuse and addiction in prisons have aided in shaping inmates into upright and helpful people in the society.
References
Bark, N. (2014). Prisoner mental health in the USA. International Psychiatry , 11 (3), 53-55.
Costopoulos, J. S., Plewinski, A. M., Monaghan, P. L., & Edkins, V. A. (2017). The impact of US Government assistance on recidivism. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health , 27 (4), 303-311.
Galassi, A., Mpofu, E., & Athanasou, J. (2015). Therapeutic community treatment of an inmate population with substance use disorders: Post-release trends in re-arrest, re-incarceration, and drug misuse relapse. International journal of environmental research and public health , 12 (6), 7059-7072.
O'Hagan, A., & Hardwick, R. (2017). Behind bars: the truth about drugs in prisons. Forensic Research & Criminology International Journal , 5 (3), 00158.
Schwitters, A. (2016). Health interventions in prisons: a literature review.
Shafie, A. A. H. B., Jamri, C. S. S. B. C., Yatau, M. N. H. B., Wahab, H. B. A., Rahimi, M. K. A. B., Sukor, N. B. M., ... & Ngoh, C. S. (2018). The Effectiveness of Career Counselling Model towards Career Maturity and Self-Concept Level of Former Drug Addicts. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences , 8 (3), 210-217.
