Criminon

Template:ScientologySeries Criminon is an element of the Scientology movement directed at rehabilitating prisoners, especially those with mental illnesses or drug addiction.

The program has used correspondence materials to treat hundreds of prisoners at the high security California State Prison, Corcoran, beginning in 1990. Criminon is administered by the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), a nonprofit organization that administers Criminon, Narconon, and other social betterment programs. Property records show Criminon's Florida headquarters, a nondescript building at 305 N Fort Harrison Ave. in Clearwater, Florida is owned by another Scientology-affiliated group, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

The program includes pamphlets with questions requiring written answers. The responses are evaluated by Scientology volunteers, and the materials are also donated, so the program is provided free to the state. Included in one pamphlet is an essay where Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard writes, "There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who by ordinary criminal law could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem, or murder."

Hubbard's 1981 booklet, The Way to Happiness, is an integral part of the program. It sets forth precepts such as "The way to happiness does not include murdering your friends or your family." "It does not include being murdered yourself." "Do not take harmful drugs;" "Be faithful to your sexual partner;" "Do not tell harmful lies;" "Don't do anything illegal;" and "Do not steal."

Some critics of Scientology question the long-term success of Criminon's program in treating addiction and mental illness, citing a lack of independent, peer-reviewed studies. As Criminon's Web site notes, the core of the prison program is the booklet, The Way to Happiness, which critics have argued is a recruiting tool for the church, as it uses words and phrases that are part of Scientology's religious terminology and were originally used in Hubbard's religious works.

In 1997, Judge Stephen Rushing, a Pinellas County, Florida judge received criticism and raised eyebrows from other judges when he began sentencing defendants to a program called "Impulse Control" that was run by Criminon. Rushing said the people running the course promised they would not try to convert anyone. However, the paper noted that many critics have suggested that criminon was being used as a recruiting tool. Rushing stated, "If it turns out to be nothing but a ploy to promote Scientology, owe an apology to the people I put in that program."

Criminon has also been criticized for promoting Scientology's hostile view of psychiatry. A Criminon instruction manual found at California's Corcoran Prison in 2005 instructs the supervisors who are supposed to be helping the inmates to encourage them to stop taking any psychiatric medication: "Most jails and prisons have a staff psychiatrist that goes in daily and gives dosages of various and sundry mind-altering drugs to the inmates. Most of the time this is a ploy to keep the inmates sedated so that they don't cause trouble." While Criminon claimed that this manual was "outdated", the replacement manual still advised that if inmates seemed angry, it may be because "some of them are on psychiatric drugs and have strange side effects as a result." Professor Stephen A. Kent says "[Scientology's goal] is to destroy psychiatry and replace it with Scientology's own treatments. Criminon is simply one of many Scientology organizations that hope to see this goal realized."

External links

• Criminon website
• Scientology program may fall to budget ax 26 May 2005 St. Petersburg Times
• The Way to Happiness Foundation website