The authors of the book, called Down the Rabbit Hole, set forth as their premise: “Those in authority seem to lack any real sense of the type of person with which the public is expecting them to deal.” They assert that the outcome is “to encourage criminal activity rather than remedy it.”

Leibowitz and McCall provide a scathing critique of what they have encountered in their exposure to often (but not always) well-intentioned staff. Their most basic criticism is that administrative directions “say nothing whatsoever about the nature of the criminal personality or what makes a criminal different from a responsible, law-abiding person.”

Having made this assertion, they have found from their own experience that “no philosophical coherence” exists among different programs that corrections offer. Worse yet, they declare, many programs provide criminals with “additional rationalizations” for their behavior that results in massive injury to others.

They point out that approaches are used which never were designed for a criminal population. While not denigrating programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, the authors point out that they were not developed “to deal with the unique set of challenges criminal offenders present.” They clearly believe that any program based on a “disease” model has no chance of being helpful in working with criminals, who rarely take responsibility for their behavior. In fact, If criminals can pass their malfeasance off onto a disease or anything else, they will do it. Leibowitz and McCall suggest that some well-intentioned and often employed programs “can perpetuate the very conduct” that they say they aim to prevent.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-the-criminal-mind/202103/down-the-rabbit-hole-book-two-inmates