This is an article that refers directly to theories and methods in use at the present time in America. If you want more proof, or more evidence in this line, you need only go as far as Time Magazine, March 18, for an article on 'prison therapy'; or to the Radical Therapist newspaper 'Rough Times' available from Resistance Bookshop, which gives some rather more gory details.

As to the relevance of the article to this country: It's fairly certain that most of the treatments described in this article are not widely used in New Zealand, if at all. However, lobotomy with the knife used to be an acceptable method here and shock treatment is still very common, despite the fact that no-one really knows how it works or what its effect will be. And prisoners from Paremoremo are convinced that they are fed drugs to keep them quiet, to keep the sap from rising.

The final and most important point is that methods pioneered in the States have an uncanny habit of turning up in New Zealand. To say "it couldn't happen hero" is more than useless; it is a positive encouragement for 'it'—in this case the organised dehumanisation of unacceptable people—to stake out the ground!

(Ms. Klein holds a Masters in Criminology from the University of California. She has written for Issues In Criminology.)

Los Angeles—Awaiting approval by the California legislature is a $1 million proposal for a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence (CSRV). If approved, the Center will provide a "think tank" and testing ground for a growing movement in law enforcement circles that looks primarily to the individual for the cause of violence and to psychological methods, from primal screams to brain operations, for the cure.

Approximately 44 professionals, for the most part psychologists and psychiatrists, at the Center will focus on the identification, diagnosis, and treatment of "violence prone" individuals in 22 projects. Sponsored jointly by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the adjacent Neuropsychiatric Institute, the CSRV has raised the specter of mass lobotomies and brainwashing techniques on prisoners and mental patients since it was first proposed in 1972. Over a year, and half a dozen proposals later, the fears have not been dispelled.

Even if it fails to get legislative approval, many of the individual programs will be implemented without the umbrella of the CSRV. A few have already begun. Critics, coming from such diverse organizations as the California State Committee on Health and Welfare and the Black Panther Party, feel that a study of violence must look to environmental and social factors for causes. In the words of the Director of the Center, Dr. Jolyon West, "Much group violence stems from social oppression, racism, and neglect But we (at the Center are primarily concerned with individual violence."