Testimony of Bonnie Kerness regarding Protection from Research Risks

American Friends Service Committee letterhead

Wray Bailey, Director Bonnie Kerness, Associate Director
United States Department
of Health and Human Services Office
for Protection from Research Risks

Testimony of Bonnie Kerness

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When Dr. Mittal first invited me to participate on this panel, we reviewed the best ways for me to include the perspectives of prisoners in the questions facing us today. Afier reading the materials he sent, I wrote to a number of prisoners with whom I work describing the research and then asked them to call me for dialogue. What foilows is reflective of the collective concerns of those prisoners, all of whom are people of color. My own concerns as a human rights advocate on behalf of prisoners for the past 20 years will also be reflected. I accept that our collective view may be skewed. The daily world I share with them is filled with reports of the worst kind of cruelty that one human being can visit upon another.

Both the prisoners and I live in a world where research and experimentation on the poor has often served as a smoke screen for racism. I probably don't have to remind you of the behavior modification research conducted on prisoners at the Vacaville, California prison in the 60's. This was about the same time as the drug research using LSD done with juveniles in Bordontown, NT and adults at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. You may also be aware of the case of Federal prisoners Silvia Baraldirrl, Alejandrina Torres and Susan Rosenberg who were kept in a sensory deprivation unit in the federal institution in Lexington, Kentucky for over two years in the 1980's. A judge forced the government to close down that particular unit. Several of the prisoners who are offering their opinions are either currently still being held in long term sensory deprivation or have been in the past. They express feelings that they are victims of current government experimentation on the effects of long term isolation.

It should come as no surprise that the prisoners hold deep reservations about any type of research involving behavior modification. They expressed these reservations on several different levels. In part, their reluctance comes from the historical distrust that people of color hold concerning the field of psychotherapy. The history of that and related fields is fraught with racism beginning in the 1800's when escaping Blacks were diagnosed as having the mental disease of "Drapetomania", which was defined by a Louisiana physician as an uncontrollable urge to run away from their "masters". Their suspicion of these fields continues through today in noting the role of psychologists and social workers who filter a disproportionate number of children of color into special education and vocational schools. They see commnunity mental health centers as a place to get addicted to psychotropic drugs, and prisons in general as an experiment with genocide.

Along with reservations based on history there is also concern about the current climate of racism and how this particular experiment plans to adjust for that. They expressed feeling that, once again, middle class folks are interested in studying symptoms rather than root causes. In their reasoning, why study the victim of societal dysfunction. Poor folks of color are certainly curious to discover what is the cause of so much hatred and mean-spiritedness directed towards them. Why not study the motivation of the rich, white males who make the laws that have resulted in poverty, poor living conditions, poor nutrition, poor schools and violence? Their feeling, is that we all need to be mindful about the direction of any research. What questions you ask of whom is clearly a political decision. Studying the poor has been a long term national past time that has not resulted in any improvement in the lives of those who have been studied.

Aside from historical concerns and concerns about the racist nature of the research field in general, the prisoners also reflected some concerns about this particular study. They wondered about the input of poor; people of color into the creation of the research model. Who better to guide such research than someone with an experiential base. They also questioned whether any parenting course, no matter how intensive or excellent, can have any lasting effect on people living in ongoing conditions of economic oppression. There was also concern about the depth of the contact that many jail prisoners do not seem to have with their families, particularly their children. In my own 20 years of experience of providing post-release services, it is the county jail population that is the least responsive and the most difficult with whom to conduct any type of follow up contact.

The prisoners asked that I note that they are neither condoning nor excusing any kind of black on black violence, particularly that which is so devastating for children. Nor are they ignoring the contributions of many forms of research. They noted the careful planning and creativity of the intended research along with the clear efforts at protecting the study subjects. However, we are talking about work in two areas where ethics have historically and consistently been in short supply - that of the prison system and that of research and experimentation with people of color. Over the years, mostly white folks have come up with all kinds of "justifiable" reasons to do wrong. We encourage extreme sensitivity in this area as well as internal reflection at the propensity to study the victim rather than the victimizer. We cannot ignore the politics of medicine in the United States.

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