Correcting Corrections

Correcting Corrections is a plan to control the horrendous crime and prison problem along with the associated social issues in the United States of America.

I graduated from Fenn College in 1949 as a sociology major. I was hired and placed in the recreation department of the city of Cleveland under the supervision of Commissioner John Nagy. My job as a recreation director was to set up a recreation program for Woodhill Homes, a federal housing project. The goal was to bond neighbors and to respect each other starting at age three (3) to age eighty-five (85).This goal was accomplished, and I was in a position to study all the factors that influence the association of various group peers and the makeup of the interaction of neighbors in that federally sponsored housing project. (Site of the former Luna Park Amusement Complex).I was doing all of the above, while at the same time attending graduate school at Western Reserve University under an audit program for social group work. This study was a tradeoff of cooperation with the university by supplying and organizing groups of children for the field practicum of the graduate school students of W.R.U. From being the director of recreation at Woodhill Homes, I moved to the Board of Education in Cleveland working for Gus I. Kern, the supervisor of evening school recreation conducted in the school buildings on Cleveland's east side. The school assigned was Sowinsky School near East 79th Street. I then left the field of recreation because of the low pay and entered employment in industry. Then, in 1972 I entered the field of corrections for the state of Ohio by opening and developing the Cleveland Reintegration Center. This was a no lock-up corrections facility that housed anywhere from twenty-five to seventy-five inmates (men and women still doing prison time) for monitored employment, social, and recreational supervision and adjustment prior to final release to their home neighborhoods. This center or institution was in operation for fourteen (14) years with me as superintendent and director.