Parker Statement - Psychiatric Consultant Claims Rehabilitation is Helped Through Positive Identification with Community

Press Release
September 5, 1968

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Parker Statement - Psychiatric Consultant Claims Rehabilitation is Helped Through Positive Identification with Community preview

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  • Press Releases, Volume 5. Parker Statement - Psychiatric Consultant Claims Rehabilitation is Helped Through Positive Identification with Community, 1968. bf86e6e4-b892-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/4a90672b-3d83-460e-857f-308d12ebaf9b/parker-statement-psychiatric-consultant-claims-rehabilitation-is-helped-through-positive-identification-with-community. Accessed July 31, 2025.

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    Pus 
President 

I Hon, Francis E. Rivers 

A PRESS RELEASE ctor Lo 

egal efense und ; : 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC Jesse DeVore, 

10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212 

Statement by Milford Parker, M.D., 
Chief, Adult Psychiatric Clinic, 
Harlem Hospital, Sept. 5, 1968 

Individuals who have come into conflict with society because of 

criminal behavior are most frequently people who have deep feelings 

of alienation and have great difficulty in identifying with the com- 

munity. This is particularly true for the black prisoner. 

Imprisonment, by isolating the individual still further from 

society, serves to perpetuate and aggravate this undesirable, 

emotionally damaging situation. To the extent that imprisonment is 

regarded as primarily a rehabilitative process rather than punitive 

and revengeful, every effort should be made to aid the prisoner in 

overcoming his sense of social alienation and isolation and to estab- 

lish a positive identification with the community. It would follow 

from this, therefore, that any and all efforts on the part of a 

prisoner to establish or maintain a relationship to the community 

through the reading of magazines, newspapers, books or other printed 

material should be given every encouragement. This type of interest 

is often indicative of an area of relative emotional health in an 

otherwise quite disturbed individual and can serve as a valuable 

starting point in helping him towards becoming an involved, 

contributing member of society. 

By denying the prisoner easy access to printed material from 

the community, his sense of alienation and isolation and closely 

associated feelings of resentment and hostility are increased, 

making the continuation of his criminal, anti-social behavior ever 

more likely. If he is unable to identify with society or feel that 

he has a stake in it, then he has no interest in becoming a part of 

it, preserving it, or strengthening it. Indeed, he regards it as 

the source of his feelings of frustration and as a legitimate target 

for the expression of his hostile rage. 

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