Western Washington University Western CEDAR Western Reports and Résumé Western Publications 12-1977 Résumé, December, 1977, Volume 09, Issue 03 Alumni Association, WWU Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/alumni_reports Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Alumni Association, WWU, "Résumé, December, 1977, Volume 09, Issue 03" (1977). Western Reports and Résumé. 149. https://cedar.wwu.edu/alumni_reports/149 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Western Publications at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Western Reports and Résumé by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VOL. 9, NO. 3 A Report to Alumni and Other Friends of Western Washington University DECEMBER, 1977 Professor sees different prisons system Thomas Tabasz agrees with most benefit framework of applied would be required to complete an critics of prisons in this country—that economics. educational program, personally de­ they are deplorable, disgraceful and The result is Tabasz’s book, Toward signed for them, before being released. embarrassing. But there the agreement an Economics of Prisons, in which he Tabasz came up with his alternative stops. He thinks conditions should be applies some basic economic principles by using an elaborate computer system worse. and comes up with some rather unusual and linear programming technique Not that Tabasz, a Western alternatives. widely used in managerial decision­ economics professor, supports over­ “Today’s prisons are judged mostly making circles. He applied those tech­ crowding, in­ by the fact that they keep people niques after researching thousands of prison crime, locked up and by the number of escapes records provided by the federal prison and a lack of they have,” Tabasz said. “I wanted to parole board and by visiting several incentives which see what could be said about prison prisons. describe so management from a cost-benefit social “The job was to look at the benefits many prisons perspective.” of putting criminals In jail versus the today. He pro­ What he envisions is a two-phase costs of crimes they could be expected poses a slightly sentence for offenders controlled by the to commit were they not locked up,” different judge passing sentence. Tabasz said. system. “The first phase would be fairly His computer data showed that Tabasz, 30, short, but utterly miserable,” Tabasz society spends about $1,000 for each became in­ Tabasz explained. “Solitary confinement, heavy offense to prevent armed robbery. terested in the plight of America’s labor, stocks, flogging. The prisoner Murder came out at a cost of $1,600, he prison system during New York’s Attica would know he’s being punished.” said. “uprising” in the early 1970s. He He said phase two would be up to In his computations, he considered decided that prison unrest would make the discretion of the judge after each offender’s age, crime type, heroin an interesting application of the cost- reviewing the offender’s past. Prisoners history and prior prison record and assigned a social value (in money terms) to each crime. By multiplying these social costs and the number of crimes, Tabasz came up with an estimate of the value of putting a man In prison. He then subtracted the cost of keeping him in prison. Tabasz found that under his pro­ posed system it would be socially profitable to build more prisons. Social returns might run as high as $30,000 for every $10,000 spent in prisons. His alternative approach is designed for “dangerous people” to serve long sentences and to let “nondangerous” people out of prison. For those who move to phase two under Tabasz’s system, requirements might range from completing high school to junior college to an apprenticeship program before being released. Rehabilitation by education would be provided. For those inmates who got out of line during phase two, another dose of phase one would be required, judges, in consultation with social workers and others, would monitor each inmate’s progress during phase two, providing early release when requirements had been met. Tabasz admits that a number of factors are not included in his statistics. There is no real way, he said, to compute suffering of crime victims or their families in a dollar amount. But while Tabasz’s proposed system may need further refinement. It is one Fairhaven Bridgers Embar Chadwell (left) and Sybil Bayles tote equipment on recent backpacking trip to archaeological digs of a buried Makah Indian village on the Olympic coast. The eight Bridge of the few efforts being made to provide members of the party ranged in age from 55 to 77, and, while not certain that they would want to alternatives to this country’s prison repeat the trip, all were glad that they had made the effort. (Photo by Lorene Bell) system. □ 2 handbag as she watched the testing procedure, knowing that after years of living in a nearly silent world, her grandson might be able to look forward to going to a special school with other deaf children. Research on the victims of rubella syndrome, children born with physical and mental handicaps because their mothers had German measles during their pregnancies, has been just one aspect of Miss Reandeau’s Peace Corps assignment in this tropical Caribbean country. In the modern offices of the Jamaica Association for the Deaf in Kingston, she is involved with clinical services, serving as the association’s practicing audiologist and speech pathologist. She gives hearing tests and speech therapy and is developing a program to guide the parents of deaf children. Several days a week, she offers training to the association’s teachers and to students at Peace Corps volunteer Rita Reandeau, 24, of Port Angeles gives a hearing test to a young boy at the Jamaica Association for the Deaf in Kingston. a teachers’ college. The association was founded in 1938. It runs several schools for deaf children and a unit classroom for the Aftermath of measles epidemic hearing-impaired. The Jamaican govern­ ment provides some assistance for KINGSTON, Jamaica — “In 1959, before joining the Peace Corps in teachers’ salaries and educational costs, 1965 and 1973, Jamaica was hit by a August, 1976. One of her first jobs was but many of the association’s services German measles epidemic and there was to assist the association’s executive are funded by donations. no vaccine,” explained Peace Corps director in an investigation of 20 cases Reandeau Is assisting the asso­ volunteer speech pathologist and of children born after the previous ciation’s professional staff in its ongoing audiologist Dolorita (Rita) Reandeau of German measles epidemics. efforts to upgrade the training of its Port Angeles. The young boy she was working with special education teachers and to A 1975 speech pathology and smiled gently with only flickerings of expand services. audiology graduate of Western Wash­ understanding as she showed him how ington University, she served a one-year to raise his hand when he heard the “We recently finished seven months graduate internship at the Washington sounds of the audiometer. Sitting close of research on rubella syndrome, which State School for the Blind in Vancouver by, his grandmother clutched her involves eye problems, deafness, heart defects and learning disabilities,” said Reandeau, who had worked with multiply-disabled children during her internship. “We presented the results to the Canadian International Development Agency. They are working with other agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pan American Health Organization to build a pre-school program here for children of the 1973 epidemic and to train teachers to handle the multiple problems. They also hope to institute an island-wide mobile unit to screen children for deafness and other rubella- related problems.” She is one of about 100 Peace Corps volunteers now working in Jamaica. At the request of the government, most are training teachers or teaching in the fields of special education, early child­ hood education and vocational edu­ cation. The need for teachers is high right now because more than one-half of PROJECT iNTERTIE — Among current campus construction projects is Project Intertie, intended Jamaica’s population of two million to correct utilities problems stemming from the settling of the peat bog that underlies much of the campus. Here workmen install concrete supports that will prevent sagging and possible breakage of people Is under 16 years old. Other utilities lines, included in the project is the landscaping of the area bounded by the Art Building, Peace Corps volunteers are assigned to Carver Gym and Bond Hall. The project will be completed in the spring of 1978. health and agriculture projects. □ 3 Committee assessing goals of Fair haven A committee of Western faculty, 2. To report on and evaluate changes 8. To evaluate the existing relation­ joined by an outside educational ad­ in the patterns of use of the Fairhaven ship between Fairhaven College and ministrator, is assessing goals and residential complex and to recommend Western, and, where appropriate, to directions of Fairhaven College. The any changes in its future use or control. recommend changes in the nature of evaluation came as a result of declining 3. To evaluate the relationship of the that relationship, and to recommend on enrollments at the non-traditional Bridge program to Fairhaven College the continued existence of the Fair­ cluster college and an Internal turmoil and to recommend changes in that haven academic program. If the recom­ that led to the Fairhaven faculty relationship where appropriate. mendation is to discontinue the Fair­ requesting the resignation of Dean 4. To evaluate the costs of the haven College academic program, Joseph D.