Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Spy Games - Surveylance: Let The Spy Games Begin
"In the end, intelligence (the spy kind), boils down to people,". In jails, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and other treatment centers, surveillance is not as difficult and does not require as much skill as it does at STC. Because rehabilitation is spread over the Newport Beach peninsula, and because clients are given a mountain bike and freedom to roam, information gathering and monitoring turns into a spy game. Intelligence and control are the most unique and uncharacteristic aspects of STC. It is a game knowing what clients are doing and how their treatment is proceeding. Rehabilitating alcoholics and drug addicts is a tricky business. Generally accepted, although not scientifically proven, the only way to treat an addict is with another addict. This is "one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic." There are many reasons for this, but the main ones is why that if a staff member is an alcoholic/addict, he or she has all of the behavioral characteristics of the addicted psychopath, as noted earlier, and he or she is capable of fooling the most skilled psychiatric profiler. "It takes one to know one" is perfectly applicable to the client/staff relationship at STC. Even more beneficial to the staff's intelligence and surveillance gathering ability is the fact that 90% of them were also clients at STC. The staff therefore are inherently skilled at deciphering the alcoholic/addict's behavior and dismissing their lies. But even with these acquired superpowers, beating the alcoholic/addict at his or her game is a gigantic undertaking not easily achieved in a facility as geographically complicated as STC.
Each of the sober houses is monitored by a staff member during the day. Routine checks of the house are called "sweeps." The sweeps are designed to monitor attendance at scheduled group meetings and required activities. The Field Agent goes from house to house to catch truancy and to check on the cleanliness of the houses (a mandatory rule a STC is organization and cleanliness). If a Field Agents finds a client at home, he or she is immediately confronted and ordered to go to the designated activity. Sweeps occur everyday at 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 10pm, and 11pm.
In addition to theses sweeps, each meeting, whether held at the Center or at the local AA club, is monitored by a Field Agent. If any of the STC clients are missing, a phone call to the client's house is made and a field agent is sent immediately dispatched. Whether the client eventually attends to the meeting or not, he or she is "written-up" by the Field Agent. In this way, every staff member is made aware of the client's deviant behavior.
The owner of STC, who started with only a few houses, has set the tone of communications. "The meeting starts before the meeting. If you want to know what's going on around here, then you show up before the meeting." This statement can be applied to all staff meetings. A great deal of information is gathered about clients while staff employees are standing around the coffee pot waiting for one of the many staff meetings to begin. "We keep more people in the loop than in most places," the owner comments.
Mark is a new marketing representative at STC who previously worked at The Betty Ford Center and has, like many others, come to regard STC as an amazing facility. "At first I was skeptical, as many people are from other facilities, about how organized and structured STC is." Rick who is working in the STC marketing department after working at another treatment facility in the area, says, "Most other recovery programs, or professionals, view STC as a bunch of halfway houses where people use during the day and fake it at night. Now I know that it's not like that at all. It's highly structured and full of potential."
Gathering surveillance on clients at STC is a large part of the program's success. Clients are carefully, consistently monitored in their natural environment, and usually unaware they are being watched. This is possible due to the panoptical surveillance posts within the Center. From the Executive Director's second-story office, one can look down onto the patio area where clients congregate to smoke and talk. Not only can everything be observed, it can be heard.
All of the Center's windows are tinted to a mirror like shine on the outside, making it impossible for people to see what is going on inside. The staff knows what's going on outside the office without the clients knowing they know. Even sexual liaisons, forbidden, can be discovered. A casual glance, a too-long look, even body language can and is noted for information to help the recovery process. Observation of the client's behavior at outside meetings is also an important part of monitoring clients and gathering intelligence. The meeting monitors can watch the client's interact during meeting breaks at the Beach Club (the outside meeting place) and observe client's interactions, loners who are not connecting with the group, and clients who attempt to leave the meeting early, or arrive late.
Another factor that aids surveillance is the proximity of the staff's private living quarters to the STC community. The Field Officer Director and Director of Intelligence, for lack of a better term, lives next-door to one of the sober houses. Other staff members live either within the peninsula, or close by. This creates an unusual and beneficial situation. Often a client will be shopping at a grocery store, buying coffee at Starbucks, or riding his or her bike on the boardwalk and come into contact with an off-duty staff member. It's easy to come into contact with two to three staff members who are doing the same thing. Sometimes the client does not know the staff members are watching, which gives the staff member a distinct advantage. In any field study or research situation, the best behavioral information is gathered when the subjects have no idea they are being studied.
Each of the sober houses is monitored by a staff member during the day. Routine checks of the house are called "sweeps." The sweeps are designed to monitor attendance at scheduled group meetings and required activities. The Field Agent goes from house to house to catch truancy and to check on the cleanliness of the houses (a mandatory rule a STC is organization and cleanliness). If a Field Agents finds a client at home, he or she is immediately confronted and ordered to go to the designated activity. Sweeps occur everyday at 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 10pm, and 11pm.
In addition to theses sweeps, each meeting, whether held at the Center or at the local AA club, is monitored by a Field Agent. If any of the STC clients are missing, a phone call to the client's house is made and a field agent is sent immediately dispatched. Whether the client eventually attends to the meeting or not, he or she is "written-up" by the Field Agent. In this way, every staff member is made aware of the client's deviant behavior.
The owner of STC, who started with only a few houses, has set the tone of communications. "The meeting starts before the meeting. If you want to know what's going on around here, then you show up before the meeting." This statement can be applied to all staff meetings. A great deal of information is gathered about clients while staff employees are standing around the coffee pot waiting for one of the many staff meetings to begin. "We keep more people in the loop than in most places," the owner comments.
Mark is a new marketing representative at STC who previously worked at The Betty Ford Center and has, like many others, come to regard STC as an amazing facility. "At first I was skeptical, as many people are from other facilities, about how organized and structured STC is." Rick who is working in the STC marketing department after working at another treatment facility in the area, says, "Most other recovery programs, or professionals, view STC as a bunch of halfway houses where people use during the day and fake it at night. Now I know that it's not like that at all. It's highly structured and full of potential."
Gathering surveillance on clients at STC is a large part of the program's success. Clients are carefully, consistently monitored in their natural environment, and usually unaware they are being watched. This is possible due to the panoptical surveillance posts within the Center. From the Executive Director's second-story office, one can look down onto the patio area where clients congregate to smoke and talk. Not only can everything be observed, it can be heard.
All of the Center's windows are tinted to a mirror like shine on the outside, making it impossible for people to see what is going on inside. The staff knows what's going on outside the office without the clients knowing they know. Even sexual liaisons, forbidden, can be discovered. A casual glance, a too-long look, even body language can and is noted for information to help the recovery process. Observation of the client's behavior at outside meetings is also an important part of monitoring clients and gathering intelligence. The meeting monitors can watch the client's interact during meeting breaks at the Beach Club (the outside meeting place) and observe client's interactions, loners who are not connecting with the group, and clients who attempt to leave the meeting early, or arrive late.
Another factor that aids surveillance is the proximity of the staff's private living quarters to the STC community. The Field Officer Director and Director of Intelligence, for lack of a better term, lives next-door to one of the sober houses. Other staff members live either within the peninsula, or close by. This creates an unusual and beneficial situation. Often a client will be shopping at a grocery store, buying coffee at Starbucks, or riding his or her bike on the boardwalk and come into contact with an off-duty staff member. It's easy to come into contact with two to three staff members who are doing the same thing. Sometimes the client does not know the staff members are watching, which gives the staff member a distinct advantage. In any field study or research situation, the best behavioral information is gathered when the subjects have no idea they are being studied.
Labels: Spy-Games
