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Abstract: 

Professor Hans Toch invented the category of the Disturbed Disruptive Inmate (DDI)and he still owns it. He does not here question the legitimacy of mandating treatment for inmates with serious mental illness (SMI) but correctly points out that the absence of SMI does not equate with resilience or a capacity to survive prison conditions. Thus, a prisoner’s need for help or to avoid, say, penal isolation, should not turn exclusively on a mental health diagnosis. The author, you will soon see, has a particularly elegant way of making these points.

Keywords: DDI resocialization unit; court interventions; decompression; symptom reduction; Axis I diagnoses

Affiliations:  1: SUNY Albany (Emeritus).