California Men's Colony (CMC)

History

Historically, California Men's Colony offered few vocational training spots for new inmate recruits, largely because of the size of the prison population serving very long sentences. Even though training was mostly achieved through self-motivation and initiative, there were still long waiting lists for entrance into shop programs (Dickover 1971).

California Men's Colony was also used as a testing ground for new hypnotherapy programs in the late 1960s. Hypnotherapy, an approach that uses deep breathing, relaxation exercises, and hypnosis to uncover repressed memories, emotions, or traumatic events that may be influencing the subject's present state of mind. A similar program focused on anger regression in a prison facility in Chilicothe, Ohio in the 1980s. This program was evaluated in 1988 by Eisel, who found that all subjects who participated reported reduced anger towards their agressor, and that after a 1-year follow-up, none had repeated violent or assaultive acts of any kind.