San Quentin Certifies Prisoners As Drug Counselors

Thanks to Michael at Corr Sent
This is a phenomenal piece about how the prison at San Quentin is finally using the people they have in prison as a resource. Warden Ayers should get a medal.

Behind the stone walls and razor wire that surround California's San Quentin State Prison, a group of prisoners is sitting quietly in the prison's sanctuary for group drug counseling.

But the man leading the discussion, Brian Smith, isn't a psychologist or certified specialist in substance abuse. Smith is a fellow prisoner who has served 24 years of a life sentence. He's also part of an innovative peer-counseling program at San Quentin that's turning prisoners into certified drug and alcohol counselors.

Two years ago, Smith and a half dozen other inmates began looking for a drug treatment program that went beyond the prison's offerings.

"At one point in my incarceration, I realized that addiction is just one part of the problem," says inmate Don Kronk. "It's just the symptom — the actual outward appearance of what's going on inside — and I realized there's a lot more to this and just an AA group … wasn't going deep enough."

They eventually found the Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, or Caadac, which requires seven academic courses, 4,000 hours of supervised counseling and hundreds of dollars in credential fees. Outside addiction specialists at local universities and drug and alcohol treatment centers offered to teach the courses, and with the support of San Quentin Warden Robert Ayers, the prisoners knuckled down for the rigorous training.
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