TRAINING INMATES AS PARALEGALS - AN EVALUATION By James Gordon Emshoff A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Psychology 1978 - ~ of mg U;-1 '\ \ ABSTRACT TRAINING INMATES AS PARALEGALS - AN EVALUATION By James Gordon Emshoff A program to train inmates as paralegals was establsihed at the State Prison of Southern Michigan. Qualified inmates were randomly assigned to the training or a control condition. Both groups were ad- ministered measures assessing legal knowledge, the use of legal knowl— edge, attitudes concerning the criminal justice system, and self- perception before and after training. The trainee group showed a significant increase in its amount of legal knowledge after training. It also reported a significant in- crease in the number of other inmates requesting aid from its members regarding legal problems. Interviews with a random sample of the in- mate population confirm the increased use of the trainees as legal re- sources in the prison. These interviews also revealed a great deal of support for the training program within the prison. This support in- creased over the two interviewing periods, shortly after the initiation of the program and again nine months later, after the graduation of the trainees. The project is discussed as a means of providing legal ser- vices to inmates and within the framework of general social change. DEDICATION To Mary, whose assistance made this possible, and whose love made it bearable. ii Chapter II. III. IV. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legal Needs of Inmates . . . . . . . . . . . . Obstacles in Handling Legal Problems . . . . Reaction of the Prison and the Courts . . . . Attempted Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Trained Inmate Paralegal . . . . . . METHOD . . . . . . . . . . . . Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Procedures and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paralegal Trainee Measures . . . . . . . . . . Legal Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attitudes and Perceptions . . . . . . . . Use of Legal Knowledge . . . . . . . . . Interviews of the General Inmate Population DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Effects of the Paralegal Training Programs Trainee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legal Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . Action on Legal Problems . . . . . . . . Attitude Change . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Page ix k‘h‘ \JBJGDU1P‘ 23 23 24 25 27 29 31 33 33 33 38 6O 76 83 83 83 84 88 Chapter APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX Inmate Reactions . . . . . . . . . . Paralegal Training as Providing Access The Project as Social Change . . . . . D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . REF ERENC E S O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 iv to the Courts Page . 92 . 97 99 107 108 116 . 119 . 120 . 122 . 128 . 137 140 . 142 147 149 . 151 Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 LIST OF TABLES Experimental Design — Measures Administered . . . Legal Knowledge Test - Total Scores . . . . . . . Legal Knowledge Subtests - Average Scores . . . . Legal Research Methods Subtest - Data Analysis . Criminal Law Subtest - Data Analysis . . . . . . Constitutional Law Subtest - Data Analysis . . . Civil Law Subtest - Data Analysis . . . . . . . . Michigan Law Subtest - Data Analysis . . . . . . Attitudes Toward Aspects of Jackson Prison - Average Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attitudes Toward Jackson Prison - Data Analysis . Attitudes Toward Block Officers - Data Analysis . Attitudes Toward Aspects of the Criminal Justice system 0 O O O O I I O O O O O O O O O O O O Attitudes Toward Federal Courts - Data Analysis . Attitudes Toward Supreme Court — Data Analysis . Attitudes Toward Judges - Data Analysis . . Semantic Differential Factor Analysis . . . . . . Self-Perception - Average Scores . . . . . . . . Degree of Logic in Decision-Making - Data Analysis Ratings of the Paralegal Training Program and Its Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 27 35 37 39 4O 41 42 43 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 53 56 57 59 Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table Table 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3O 31 32 33 34 35 Percentage of Trainee and Control Group Members Asked to Aid with Legal Problems . . . . . . . . Number of Inmates Requesting Legal Help from Trainee and Control Group Members . . . . . . . . . . . . Total Number of Requests for Legal Aid - Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of Requests for Aid with Divorce - Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number of Requests for Aid with Complaints Against Prison '- Data AnalYSiS o o o o o o o o o o o o 0 Number of Requests for Aid with Detainers - Data Analysis 0 O O O O O O O O C O O O O C C C O O 0 Actions Generally Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Legal Problems of Other Inmates . . . Result of Actions Generally Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Legal Problems of other Inmates O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 Legal Problems of Trainee and Control Group Members . Actions Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Personal Legal Problems . . . . . . . . . . Result of Actions Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Personal Legal Problems . . . . . . Actions Planned by Trainee and Control Group Members on Personal Legal Problems . . . . . . . . . . . Expected Result of Actions Planned by Trainee and Control Group Members on Personal Legal Problems Frequency of Actual, Planned, and Hypothetical Use of Trainee and Control Group Members for Legal Aid 0 I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O Inmate Attitudes Toward the Paralegal Training Program 0 O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O 0 General Comments Made by Three or More Inmates about the Paralegal Training Program During the Inmate Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi Page 61 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 72 74 74 75 75 77 80 82 Page Table 36 Significant Changes in Trainees Attributed to Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 /viii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 Legal Knowledge Test Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the past two decades, there has been a growing emphasis placed on human rights. Beginning with the civil rights movement of the early 1960's, society has become increasingly aware of the needs of many seg- ments of our population, such as the aged, migrant farm workers, the mentally ill, the American Indian, and the physically handicapped. This concern has also been focused on the rights and treatment of the 280,000 people in the nation's jails and prisons. The focus of this interest has included living conditions (crowding, food, sanitation, exercise facilities, etc.), the use of force, rules regarding the na- ture and frequency of visitations, the delivery of mail and its pri- vacy, possessions an inmate is allowed to keep, the use of solitary confinement, freedom of religion, disciplinary hearings, parole, the right to treatment, civil and criminal liabilities of prison officials, legal services, and medical care. The general position advocating the legal rights of prisoners and humane treatment is represented in the writings of Brand (1973), McCollum (1973),and Orland (1971). The Legal Needs of Inmates The legal needs of an inmate is a good example of a problem which is commonplace in our prisons and at the same time relatively unrecog- nized by the general public. This lack of awareness is a result of the misconception that a person's life is simply frozen in time when he enters the prison, that he no longer has any ties with the outside world, and that the prison is too routinized and well established for legal problems to arise from within. While in a very real sense the inmate is cut off from the outside world, he is still expected to fulfill legal obligations, a difficult task under the circumstances. Resulting civil cases cover a wide range of content areas. Half of these cases are concerned with domes- tic relations. A felony conviction is grounds for divorce in some states.and child custody can be legally and permanently lost in the act of being imprisoned (Palmer, 1974). Other civil matters include housing problems (tenant-landlord disputes, mortgage problems, repos- session of property), insurance claims, loss of wages, debts, defense of suits, and compensation claims. An equally frequent problem concerns the legality of the inmate's conviction. The appeal may involve the constitutionality of the con- viction, sentence, or statute involved, unheard evidence, a change in law, illegal or improper court proceedings, lack of jurisdiction to sentence, or other such grounds. In most cases, the inmate has no legal resources available for such an appeal other than court appointed counsel who is often an inadequate source of legal assistance, as will be discussed later. A related legal problem is the imprOper imposition and computa— tion of sentences. These cases are concerned with either the length of sentence or the facts considered (good time, time served awaiting trial) in computing the sentence. Again, most states and prisons pro- vide no system for the review of sentences, except for homicide cases, which often require a review. There are two instances in which an inmate involved in parole procedures may benefit by the use of legal counsel. First, legal is— sues are often involved in the application for parole. While present law does not allow representation in the hearings themselves, inmates need legal assistance in preparing their applications. A second type of parole problem occurs when a parolee denies having violated a con— dition of parole. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the parole board must appoint counsel in such cases. One-third of all prisoners have a detainer placed on them at one time or another during their incarceration (Resource Center on Correc— tional Law and Legal Services, 1973). A detainer is a notice to a pri- son authority that another jurisdiction wants to obtain custody of an inmate on or before his release. Although these detainers are often a mere formality and are rarely acted upon, they have unpleasant reper- cussions on the treatment of the inmate by the prison. These inmates are frequently denied various priveleges or services because the pri— son acts on the unstated position that inmates who will be imprisoned elsewhere need not be rehabilitated. While an attorney or paralegal is usually able to remove such a detainer relatively easily, the in— mate, who is unfamiliar with legal terminology and process, is vir- tually powerless on his own. Institutional grievances and prisoners' rights cases, often a re— sult of a lack of understanding or knowledge of institutional rules and procedures constitute another kind of legal problem for the inmate. A legal representative is needed to deal with the problems arising from illegal living conditions and treatment. The Civil Rights Act guarantees the inmate the right to sue his keeper, but without legal help, this right is useless to the inmate. Finally, there are legal problems arising from disciplinary hear- ings and other administrative actions (classification, transfer, work release eligibility, etc.). While the Supreme Court has ruled that an inmate does not have the right to representation or cross-examination in such hearings (WOlf v. McDonnell, 1974), they have stated that the inmate has the right to some minimal due process. Legal assistance, which can be considered a component of due process, could be of great help in preparing an inmate for such proceedings. The Resource Center on Correctional Law and Legal Services (1973) has estimated an approximate ratio of the above classification of in- mates' problems, based on surveys, caseload distributions of existing legal services' projects, court caseload information, and attornies familiar with the legal needs of inmates. The breakdown is as follows: 30% civil problems 20% appeals 13% institutional grievances and civil rights cases 12% parole problems 12% detainers 10% sentence problems 3% disciplinary problems A survey at the State Prison of Southern Michigan (Emshoff, Conner, and Davidson, 1977) generally confirmed this breakdown, with a higher inci- dence of disciplinary problems (15%) and a lower incidence of parole and detainer problems (3% and 4% respectively). Obstacles in Handling Legal Problems It is clear that inmates have a variety of legal problems. Further— more, the Resource Center on Correctional Law and Legal Services (1973) estimates that the average inmate has one administrative, civil, or cri- minal legal problem every year. A survey at the State Prison of South- ern Michigan (Emshoff, et al., 1977) indicated that the average inmate had had one and one-quarter legal problems in the preceding six months. But this information in itself does not seem to indicate the need for special programs of legal assistance. Legal problems are common through- out our society and most of us are left to our own devices in dealing with them. What makes the inmate's position worthy of special attention? An answer to this question is obtained by examining the potential resources available to the inmates. Most free people deal with legal problems by hiring a private attorney. The basic factor in prohibiting the use of a private attorney by most inmates is the cost. One—third of all inmates receive no income while incarcerated. The two-thirds who are employed receive an average wage of seventy-five cents per day. At this rate, it would take an inmate nearly two years to pay a rather minimal lawyer's fee of $300, provided he bought nothing during this time, including personal items such as toothpaste, cigarettes, or soap. Secondly, there is often a great geographic distance between pri— sons and metropolitan areas. This is no accident. Prisons, like most mental hospitals, were built where they could be out of sight (and thus out of the consideration) of the public. Consequently, Attica is four hundred miles from New York City. Lucasville, the largest prison in Ohio, is a two-hour drive from Cleveland and a five-hour drive from Cincinnati, the two cities which are the former homes of a majority of the inmates. This geographic distance discourages a private lawyer (perhaps a family lawyer) from accepting inmate clients. If they do accept inmate clients, the geographic distance adds even more expense to the inmate. Furthermore, under these circumstances, much of the client-attorney communication takes place by mail. This reduces the ability of an inmate to influence his own case. Face-to-face contact is essential in an attorney—client relationship. This is particularly true for inmates who usually do not understand and have a hard time communicating complicated legal situations. The mail is even less ef- fective for the many illiterate or semi-literate inmates. Finally, there is a psychological distance between the inmate and the average private attorney. The experiences and life styles of an attorney and inmate are often so different as to seriously threaten the ability of the two to relate to each other and communicate effec- tively the crucial information each must provide the other. For some types of cases, notably appeals, a court-appointed attor- ney is supplied to the inmate. This removes one obstacle in the in- mate's way, the prohibitive expense of obtaining a lawyer's services. However, the effects of psychological and geographic distance are still active. The problem of expense is replaced by several equally imposing difficulties when using a court-appointed attorney. They are typified by (and in some ways a result of) the court-appointed attorney's lack of interest in the case. There is little reward for an attorney in such a case. In some cases, the budget for appointed attornies is so low that the attornies realize they can only be paid for minimal ef- forts. (Ironically, the low budgets are most likely to be found in poor areas, in which a greater proportion of the population must rely on appointed counsel.) The attorney's attention to his private clients supercedes the needs of his court-appointed clients. Consequently, a court-appointed attorney rarely devotes enough time to do an adequate job. An appeal is a very time-consuming case if done thoroughly. Stories of cursory performances by court-appointed attornies are plen- tiful and appalling (Blumberg, 1967). Furthermore, the practice of law has become a very specialized business and finding an attorney by chance who happens to have the necessary area of expertise is very unlikely. The inaccessibility of effective legal resources has led many in- mates to attempt to do their own legal work. The law is a very diffi- cult area in which to use a do-it-yourself approach. This is especial- ly so for the inmate population. The President's Crime Commission (1967) found that 82% of all inmates had not finished high school. Less than half had even finished eighth grade. This lack of education makes it difficult for the inmate to do his own research (if research materials are available), correspond with outside resources, and write his own documents. It may take months of research to draft a petition on an issue that a lawyer could dismiss easily and immediately. In- adequately drawn petitions are a source of inconvenience and irrita- tion to the courts and judges who must spend much time weeding through these petitions looking for and interpreting important information. Judges have expressed a fear of missing crucial information and dis- missing a legitimate petition because of the difficulty involved in reading confusing petitions. Furthermore, if self-reliance is the method of choice, many legitimate appeals will never be filed, simply out of an inmate's ignorance of the law. The Reactions of the Prison and the Courts Given the presence of undeniable legal problems and a population with severe difficulties in dealing with these problems, what has been the position of the guardian of this population, the prison? Prison administrations have further hindered the inmate in his attempt to make use of the legal system. Over the years, a number of prison regulations have restricted the inmate from access to the courts. It was once illegal for inmates to pool resources for legal assistance or for any inmate to advise or assist another inmate in any way regarding legal matters. Other common practices in many prison systems have included disciplinary action against those seeking legal remedies and confiscation of legal documents and materials (Palmer, 1974). Few prisons have provided even minimal legal services such as a notary public or law library of any quality. Recently, the courts have become more concerned with the legal needs of the prisoner and the prison's repressive stance. The consti- tutional support for this concern is founded in the right of access to the courts in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On this basis, the Supreme Court struck down the regulation allowing pri- son inspection of an inmate's documents before they are submitted to the court, in the 1940 case of Ex parte Hull. Despite this ruling and its support of an inmate's access to the courts, the period between 1940 and 1969 was marked by judicial indifference concerning the prison administration's rules regarding the legal process. 1969 was the year of the landmark case of Johnson v. Avery regard- ing the practice of "jailhouse lawyers." The presence of legal prob- lems and the lack of legal resources had given birth to the jailhouse lawyer, an inmate who, usually through self-education, has acquired legal skills. The jailhouse lawyer offers legal advice and services to other inmates, usually for some form of payment. This practice was usually forbidden by prisons until this Supreme Court decision removed the prohibition. The Court's decision was based on the fact that in- mates, many of whom were poor and uneducated, frequently had no other source of legal aid beyond what existed within the prison walls. Since the jailhouse lawyer was usually all that was available within the walls, prohibiting this practice was essentially denying access to the courts for many inmates. This ruling has had a far-reaching effect on the prison's regula- tory role regarding the legal process. However, the original ruling only referred to an illiterate's right to receive aid in preparing a writ of habeus corpus, providing the prison does not provide any other legal aid with this problem. It was up to the other courts to broaden the law. However, the emphasis in Johnson v. Avery on maintaining the inmate's right to access to the courts was significant. Lower courts have ruled that any inmate can receive assistance from a jailhouse lawyer on any legal problem, providing the prison does not provide aid for that particular problem. Thus, jailhouse lawyers can act on civil rights cases involving the prison as the defendant when prisons set up legal aid programs which prohibit this action, a 10 not uncommon occurrence. Other court interpretations of Johnson v. Avery have been concerned with what a reasonable alternative to jail- house lawyers consists of. For instance, in Novak v. Beto, the court ruled in 1971 that the state's provision of two attornies for 13,000 Texas inmates was insufficient. The question is still frequently ad- dressed in the courts. The court has also protected the use of non-professionals other than jailhouse lawyers. This has been most notable in several deci- sions prohibiting prisons from barring the use of law students in legal assistance programs. The right to access to the courts has been interpretated to mean more than the permission to use jailhouse lawyers. The 1971 ruling of Younger v. Gilmore stated that: Access to the courts...is a larger concept than that put forward by the state. It encompasses all the means a de- fendant or petitioner might require to get a fair hearing ...In some contexts this has been interpreted to require court—appointed counsel...in other situations the state might be obligated to privide free transcripts, process- serving facilities, and in_forma pauperis filing privi- leges...Johnson v. Avery...makes it clear that some pro- vision must be made to ensure that prisoners have the as- sistance necessary to file petitions and complaints which will in fact be fully considered by the courts. The specific case concerned a prison law library which the court ruled as being insufficient, thus requiring the state to provide sufficient legal materials to allow a prisoner to file petitions. For the first time, the courts ruled that not only must a prison refrain from block- ing access, it was required to actually provide the means to that access. In its ruling of the above case, the court made note of the par- ticularly difficult position that the poor prisoner finds himself in. 11 It is the poor prisoner who particularly needs the library to provide a minimum of access to the courts. Unfortunately, the poor prisoner is also often illiterate. In Hooks v. Wainwright in 1973, the court ex— pounded on the plight of the incarcerated indigent: The wealthy inmate is, by reason of that wealth, assured meaningful access to the courts, for he is advantaged with the qualitative services of his retained attorney...No one doubts the right of such a wealthy inmate so to pursue post-conviction remedies and to pursue available avenues of relief for deprivations of his civil rights. On the other hand, the indigent inmate, who may be in a position to raise identical legal issues, has no attorney, scant legal resources, and probably no experience. Because of this inequality, the court ordered the State of Florida to provide a legal services system. Courts in North Carolina and Califor— nia recently issued similar orders. Such services must be complete. An institutional legal services program prohibited from handling civil rights suits was ruled to be inadequate in providing access to the courts (Bryan v. Werner, 1975). The strongest and most authoritative ruling to date is the 1977 United States Supreme Court decision (Bounds v. Smith) in which the court held: The fundamental constitutional right of access to the courts requires prison authorities to assist inmates in the pre— paration and filing of meaningful legal papers by providing prisoners with adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law. The ruling goes on to state that indigents must be provided paper, pen, notarial services, and postage for legal documents. While the need for libraries was emphasized, it was also implied that the state must sup- ply more direct services for illiterate inmates. The ruling applies to all inmates in all correctional institutions. 12 In sum, the courts are in the process of completing a total about face in their position regarding the prison's relationship with an in— mate's legal problems. They initially condoned the prison's repression of the inmate's attempts to use the legal system. Gradually, decisions started to prohibit the prison from actively interfering with the in- mate's access to the courts, but allowed the prison and the state to take a basically passive stance. Finally, the courts recognized the fact that the prison, by its very nature (immobility, low wages, and geographic distance), was interfering with the inmate's right to the legal process. As such, they are now ordering the correctional system to provide legal resources to place the inmate in an equitable position with the rest of the population with respect to access to the courts. Attempted Solutions Even before the courts began to call for the provision of ser- vices to inmates, various agencies and institutions began to sponsor programs of legal services of various kinds. The most common method has been the use of law students as legal resources for inmates. The Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (1973) re- ported that as of 1973, there were sixth-three law schools providing some kind of legal assistance. In the best of these programs, students visited the prison once a week to interview inmates requesting legal assistance. The supervising professor reviewed the interviews with the students and made assignments. Each student handled no more than fifteen-twenty cases per semester, spending approximately fifteen hours per week on the program. 13 In only one-third of these programs did students visit the insti- tutions regularly. One-third of the programs involved irregular visits. The others operated by correspondence alone (Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility, 1973). The absence of face-to-face contact presents deficiencies detailed earlier. Another problem with such programs is that services are interrupted by exams and vacations, often at critical times. Furthermore, the scope of cases handled by these programs is usually limited. Appeals are avoided because of their time—consuming nature. Very few programs handle class action suits, civil rights cases, or other problems with the institution. Finally, the lack of continuity in handling a case and the inability of students to get involved with actual litigation severely decrease the effectiveness of the legal assistance. On the other hand, the stu- dents are usually highly motivated, and these programs can be operated for less than $20,000 per year (Jacob and Sharma, 1970). Another approach to the provision of legal services is the use of professional attornies who work within the institution. At least nine states have programs of this nature. The degree of service provided has ranged greatly, from the Boston Legal Services Project which em- ployed four attornies to handle 650 inmates (all in one institution) to a program in Ohio in which three attornies were employed to handle the problems of nine thousand inmates in seven institutions. Like the law school programs, many of these programs have been re- stricted from handling cases in which the institution is the defendant, particularly in those programs being managed by the institution. A more serious problem has been the high cost involved in hiring a suf- ficient number of professional attornies to serve all of the legal 14 needs of this country's incarcerated population. The chief advantage goes hand in hand with the cost. The competence and ability to liti- gate and represent the inmates make such programs highly appealing. Attempts have been made to provide programs using lawyers on a volunteer basis. Most of these have had difficulty in providing ef- fective services. An exception to this is a project in Joliet, Illi- nois, which in its first six months closed 352 cases and had 354 more open files. A good part of this success was due to the fact that in addition to the twenty-seven volunteer attornies, there were a five- person full time staff, twenty law students, and seven clerical workers (Resource Center on Correctional Law and Legal Services, 1973). The basic problem with volunteer programs has been a fluctuation in interest and participation. Prisons are often too far from urban areas to attract interested lawyers (Resource Center on Correctional Law and Legal Services, 1973). However, volunteers can be of great service in supplementing other programs. The problem of appeals by inmates is, as mentioned before, common. Some states have established appellate defender services for inmates. Such programs are among the oldest legal services provided for inmates. Generally, an appellate defender handles about thirty-five cases per year. These programs are usually effective in obtaining all or part of the relief requested in the appeal. The Michigan program employs four- teen attornies, handles about five hundred cases per year (about aver- age for all such programs) and receives at least some relief on an average of 275 of these cases. The obvious problem with these programs is the limitation of types of cases handled. While appeals are an important and frequent concern 15 of inmates, they represent only a fraction of the legal needs of the prisoner. Nevertheless, these programs are important in filling the gaps of the many projects that do not handle appeals due to their time- consuming nature. A few programs have attempted to use the services of the already existing jailhouse lawyers systems. The most notable of these has been the Paraprofessional Law Clinic at Graterford, Pennsylvania (Myers, 1971). This group of fourteen jailhouse lawyers formed a union to aid other inmates with appeals, detainers, and sentence problems. The service provided was preparatory--obtaining transcripts and records, initiating proceedings, helping prepare papers and petitions. The prison has provided office space, supplies, and gave work credit to the paralegals. The program in Ohio mentioned earlier employed (in addi- tion to the attornies) five jailhouse lawyers to do initial interviews and refer requests to the staff. One shortcoming in relying on jailhouse lawyers has been the in- consistency of the quality of their services. Court officials and lawyers have claimed that the poor quality of petitions drawn by many jailhouse lawyers aggravates and overburdens the court system while raising false hOpes in the inmates. The power structure develOped by jailhouse lawyers undermines the administrations's authority in some cases. Programs using jailhouse lawyers are in danger of having spe- cial treatment administered in return for favors. Supervision is ne- cessary but not often available. If actual representation and litiga- tion are to be provided, attornies must also be involved. Finally, it may be difficult to recruit jailhouse lawyers into a program in which they are allowed to do less exciting work for less enticing rewards. 16 In recent years, the legal profession has made increasing use of trained non-professionals to assist attornies. These paralegals can deal in those areas where they can best use their training and legal abilities. The American Bar Association is one of several groups en- couraging their use, adopting the following resolution at their 1968 meeting: Recognizing that freeing a lawyer from tedious and routine detail thus conserving his time and energy for truly legal problems will enable him to render his professional services to more people, thereby making legal services more fully available to the public, the Committee recommends: 1. That the legal profession recognize that there are many tasks in serving a client's needs which can be performed by a trained non-lawyer assistant working under the di— rection and supervision of a lawyer; (and) 2. That the profession encourage the training and employ- ment of such assistants;... Some legal service projects in prisons have made use of paralegals. Among the tasks they have performed in this setting are problem identi- fication, writ writing, research, record gathering, and library ser— vices. They have been of great assistance handling routine matters such as detainers, sentence computations, divorces, and other such cases in which the main tasks are a matter of formality. A good ex- ample of such use of paralegals is the Dixwell Rights project in Con- necticut, in which, for a period of one year, they provided the only assistance to inmates on non-criminal matters (Ader, 1971). As described earlier, the needs of the inmate population are over- whelming. Inmates have not only a high incidence, but also a wide di- versity of legal problems. These problems require a great deal of time to obtain a solution, implying a high cost if professional services are used exclusively. Furthermore, the geographic and psychological l7 distance between prisoners and attornies presents a further barrier to problem solution. The net result is that if professionals are to be the only source of legal aid available to the inmate population, the legal needs of this population will never be met. The paralegal can use his skills in the prison setting in order to maximize the effi— ciency and quantity of the services of the attorney. The lone attorney who must interview, research and draft papers for every case he handles finds himself unable to approach the demand for services. The attorney who has the assistance of one or more paralegals can assign some of these important and time-consuming activities, allowing the service to handle many more cases with relatively little additional expense. In effect, the caseload can be increased while the cost per case is re- duced. The Trained Inmate Paralegal The legal services project to be evaluated in this study recog- nizes the great value paralegals can have in a prison setting with the supervision of a professional attorney. Paralegals can be even more useful if they are inmates themselves. An inmate paralegal can estab— lish rapport and develOp a sense of trust with the inmate needing ser- vices. These are important ingredients in an attorney-client relation- ship. The use of inmates in any prison project tends to lend credi- bility to the program. The inmate paralegal is familiar with prison jargon, structure, and procedures. This is particularly important when handling internal problems. They are also familiar with legal problems encountered by inmates, and can help in interpreting them and transla- ting these problems from lay to legal terms. Another advantage held by l8 inmate paralegals in general is the fact that travel problems do not exist for them. Furthermore, these resources are inexpensive, even if the paralegals are paid ten times as much as normal prison wages. The inmate population in general represents a tremendous potential source for the provision of services. The economic value of the inmate manpower in state and federal prisons has been estimated at six hundred million dollars per year (Singer, 1976). This resource has been large- ly overlooked by administrators grappling with the problem of meeting the great human service needs that exist in prisons. This project re- cognizes and applies this force to a problem that clearly demands man— power. So far, such a program does not sound different from a group of recruited jailhouse lawyers used to help an attorney. The disadvan- tages involved in the use of jailhouse lawyers have already been enu- merated. For this reason and others, the inmates chosen to help in providing legal services in the present program received an intensive eight-month educational program, teaching them the knowledge and skills of a paralegal. The program was thorough and multi-faceted. (To conduct the actual classes, volunteer attornies were recruited,each to teach his own spe- ciality. The use of different teachers, in addition to providing spe— cialized instruction, is more likely to enhance transfer of learned skills from the original setting (the classroom) to any other setting (the clinic or future paralegal positions) (Emshoff, Redd, and David- son, 1976). The content covered was broad, but classes attempted to insure a basic competence in all areas. As a complement to this classroom work l9 (and the corresponding homework), each inmate was assigned to assist in handling cases in the legal aid clinic Operating in conjunction with the training program. The importance (in terms of amount learned) of actual practice of skills learned through instruction was shown by Paul and McInnis (1974) in a training program for mental health technicians. Since the training of inmates was an untested idea, it was efficient (in terms of information gained from this program as a model) to have this program be as intensive and yet broad in scope, as described. The classroom experience, homework, exposure to many different teachers, and actual clinic experience all complemented each other to provide a comprehensive and integrated training situation under the close super— vision of a directing attorney. The resulting paralegals gained a solid knowledge of the law, par- ticularly in those areas in which they can be of greatest assistance to a prison project. This avoided the gaps in knowledge and inconsistent abilities held by the established jailhouse lawyers. Furthermore, such a training program did not have to be concerned with enticing jailhouse lawyers and cutting into their system. This is not to say that jail- house lawyers were prohibited from the training program, but merely that the program was not forced to rely on those inmates who were al- ready practicing law in some form. An equally important benefit of such training is the skill the paralegal will leave the prison with. Since the use of paralegals is becoming more frequent, the training provided an inmate with a market- able skill to use when returning to the free world. It allows the per- son to make a contribution with his mind instead of returning to an un- skilled labor position. Such a feeling of accomplishment and 20 contribution to society is invaluable in keeping a man from returning to a life of crime (President's Task Force on Prison Rehabilitation, 1967). The methods and programs previously used to deal with inmate's le- gal problems have met with various degrees of success. However, the criteria used to describe the success or failure of these programs has been anything but systematic. A common measuring stick has simply been the number of cases handled. While important, this information leaves many important questions as to the actual process and results of the program unanswered. Often the evaluation of a program has consisted of a subjective (which is not to say inaccurate) perception by the direc- tor (or other staff) such as the belief that the program received too little publicity, too little administrative support, or insufficient volunteer commitment. None of the programs mentioned has included a systematic and experimental evaluation. This leaves the area of the provision of inmate legal services in an evaluative condition of anec- dotal evidence, insufficient (or possibly misleading) data, subjective opinions, and no solid conclusions. In short, it is next to impossible to state with certainty what type of programs is useful in this area. Controlled research is necessary to begin to put together an under- standing of the potential utility of different approaches. The present program includes such an evaluative component. Furthermore, allocating such resources as are needed to do a come plete training program indicated a strong commitment, especially in times of tightening budgets. It would be careless to extend or expand such a commitment, or expect others to do so, without a solid under- standing of the effectiveness of the program, as well as the reactions of the trainees and general inmate population. Such an evaluation 21 could be critical in designing future programs of this nature or in altering the present program. Since the research in this area is scarce and because the specific training of inmates as paralegals is unique, there was no existing knowledge on which to base the evaluation. It was, therefore, neces— sary to begin to build such a knowledge base from the ground floor, hy- pothesizing what effects this program might have on its participants as well as on the prison community in which it was located. The impor- tance of assessing the effects of a social intervention on multiple levels (in this case, participants and the system they exist in) has been pointed out by Kelly (1972) and Reiff (1967). A variety of poten- tial effects on participants should be measured (Fairweather and Tor- natzky, 1977). The effects examined should include the changes that are planned as goals of the program, as well as the indirect, secon- dary effects which are unplanned results of the program. The direct goal of the training was to increase the legal knowl- edge of the participants. It was reasonable to expect that an increase in legal knowledge might have an effect on how the trainees handle their own and others' legal problems (the frequency with which they were used as informal legal resources for other inmates, the actions they took, and their effectiveness). While attitude change was not directly anticipated, the training program could have affected the con- ceptions the trainees had of the legal and correctional systems, the training program itself, and their self-perceptions. Since the limited research could not determine what later effects the program had on the trainees, their predictions of their future lives served as an alter- native assessment of this longer effect. 22 In addition to these concerns with the effect of the program on the trainees, the radiating impact of the program was considered impor— tant, especially in light of the need to assess an intervention's ef- fects on multiple levels. Therefore, an assessment of the reactions of the remainder of the inmates in the prison became part of the evalua- tion plan. The present study, therefore, sought experimentally to evaluate the program in terms of (l) the amount of legal knowledge gained, (2) the use of this legal knowledge with respect to the trainees' and others' legal problems, and (3) the effect of the program on attitudes held by the trainees. (4) The study also assessed the general inmate pOpulation's reactions to the re ram at two oints in time. P g P CHAPTER III METHOD Background The present program was implemented at the State Prison of South- ern Michigan located in Jackson, Michigan. This maximum security pri- son is the largest walled prison in the world. Approximately 3700 in- mates reside within the walls, sixteen hundred are outside the walls in lower-security trustee divisions, and five hundred are in the reception and guidance center awaiting classification and assignment. The program was administered by the State Bar of Michigan. In ad- dition to the paralegal training, the program consisted of a legal aid clinic offering free legal services to those within the walls. The large majority of the funds for the program's Operation came from a grant from an American Bar Association program, Bar Association Support to Improve Correctional Services (BASICS) which, in turn, was strongly supported by a grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. BASICS was formed in 1974 to provide and improve a variety of correctional ser- vices by using the resources and support of local and state bar associa- tions. The evaluation of the program at Jackson is financially sup- ported by a separate grant from BASICS to do evaluations of several pro- grams receiving grants from BASICS. Staff A five-person Board of Control was established in the fall of 1975 to administer and manage the program. Three of the Board members are in Michigan Bar's Young Lawyers' section. The Board members represent 23 24 different groups with an interest in the program: one is a member Of a state black bar association, another a member of a local law school fa- culty; one represents the Director's Office of the Michigan Department of Corrections, and another is an inmate from the State Prison Of South- ern Michigan. One of this Board's first tasks was to hire a staff at- torney who would coordinate paralegal training. This attorney was hired in November, 1975, and served as AssistantDirector of the Project. In March, 1976, a second staff attorney was hired as Project Director with specific responsibility for the Operation Of the legal services clinic. Subjects In December, 1975, the staff training coordinator placed an article in the prison newspaper, The Spectator, introducing and describing the paralegal training program. An application accompanied the article. The fifty-six inmates who responded were all personally interviewed by the staff attorney and the inmate representative on the Board Of Con— trol. In addition, a writing sample (explaining the inmates' reasons for wanting tO participate) and institutional records were used to help make selections. The following criteria for selection were placed in their approximate order Of importance by the paralegal training coor- dinator: 1. Intellectual and verbal skills 2. Motivation and sincerity 3. Institutional stability (good disciplinary record) 4. Legal experience and career motivation 5. Formal education and training 6. Institutional job performance 25 7. Ability and willingness to refrain from receiving extra- curricular payment 8. Criminal record 9. Department employee recommendation 10. Program and activity participation 11. Reputation In addition, inmates had to have a minimum of two years remaining on their sentences in order to make training worthwhile for clinic placement. On the other hand, "lifers" were a low priority, as they would not get the chance to use their skills on the outside. Within all of these confines, the training coordinator also wanted a racial balance among paralegals which reflected the social composition Of the prison. Of the twenty inmates selected on the basis Of the above criteria, eleven were black and nine were white. The average inmate selected was 32.6 years Old, had had 12.7 years Of education, and had been in Jack- son for 2.7 years. Procedures and Design These twenty inmates were all informed that they were in the group from which the ten paralegal trainees would be selected. They were then instructed to report to the law library to complete a series of ques- tionnaires for which they would receive five dollars in their prison accounts. At the law library, the purpose Of the evaluation and its independence from the program and from the corrections system were ex- plained. It was emphasized that the responses given to the measures would have no bearing on the eventual selection Of the ten inmates for training. The fact that all information Obtained would be kept confi— dential and used for an evaluation of the group as a whole was also 26 stressed. A statement of voluntary participation and release Of infor- mation (Appendix A) was signed by each inmate. Following completion Of the pre-testing, a random selection Of ten inmates was made from the group Of twenty, using a table of random num- bers. These ten inmates became the experimental paralegal trainees, while the other ten inmates became a control group. Shortly after this, the training coordinator selected two Of this control group to serve as alternates to the experimental group in case any trainees dropped out. This non-random assignment and reduction of the control group was agreed to by the author because the original random selec- tion had been a considerable concession on the training coordinator's part after much negotiation and a working relationship had to be maintained. The "alternates" (one Of whom also acted as the clerk for the program) actually became full-fledged trainees in practice, but cannot be considered as such due to their non-random selection. Therefore, there resulted an experimental group of ten and a control group of eight. All Of the instruments tO be described were adminis- tered to both groups again with a week Of the conclusion Of the training. Table 1 illustrates this design. 27 TABLE 1 Experimental Design--Measures Administered TIME PRE POST Legal knowledge test Semantic differential Prediction scale Self-concept items All measures Own legal problems ques— tionnaire Others' legal problems questionnaire EXPERIMENTAL CONDITION All measures All measures CONTROL Instruments The instruments administered to the trainees and control groups in— cluded a test of legal knowledge, the semantic differential (to measure attitudes towards a variety Of concepts), a measure Of self-perception, a questionnaire to Obtain inmates' predictions about their lives after their releases from prison, and measures to assess the inmates' han- dling of their own and others' legal problems. Test Of legal knowledge. The test of legal knowledge (Appendix B) consisted Of 130 Objective questions designed by Richard Wiedmeyer, a professor in the paralegal training program at Ferris State College in Big Rapids, Michigan. His experience in paralegal training provided the content validity of the questions chosen as reflecting the knowl- edge needed by a paralegal. The content covered included the legal 28 profession, basic skills (reasoning, research, interviewing), and sub— stantive areas (criminal law, constitutional law, and civil law). Ex- amples include: 27. The citation M.S.A. 27A—305 refers to what publication? 53. Appeals from misdemeanor convictions are generally heard by which Michigan court? 95. If one wants to create a partnership or corporation in Michigan, what must one generally do? Semantic differential. This is a frequently used instrument de- signed to determine the meaning a person gives to a concept (Osgood, 1957). The measure provided a series of scales (i.e., good—bad) on which concepts can be rated. Components Of the meaning Of the concept are Obtained by summing responses to specific scales. In this case, the concepts rated were mostly components of the legal and correctional systems (Appendix C). These components included both personnel (i.e., guards, judges, defense attorneys) and organizations (i.e., trial courts, parole boards, police departments) as well as more general con- cepts (i.e., laws, the legal profession). Self-concept scale. This series of questions was developed by the Community Psychology Action Center at the University Of Illinois to as- sess self-reported personality change in students' acting as human ser- vices volunteers (Appendix D). The questions mostly deal with problem- solving behavior. Future life questionnaire. The future life questionnaire (Appen- dix E) was designed by the author specifically for this research. It involved the inmates' perceptions of various aspects of their lives (i.e., employment, education, family life) after release, which could conceivably have been altered by participation in the program. For 29 example, the inmates were asked, "How much do you think you will earn per week at your first job?" Legal problems questionnaire. These measures were also designed by the author (Appendices F and G). The first measure concerned the inmates' own problems. Ten problems (i.e., appeals, detainers) were listed and provisions made for any other problems not listed. For each problem, the inmate was asked if he had the problem (or had had it in the preceding six months), what he had done about it, what the result was, what his future plans were, and what the predicted result Of these plans was. The other legal problems questionnaire was very similar to that described above. The main difference was that the inmate was asked about problems that other inmates had requested aid for in the preced- ing six months. Questions on plans and predicted results were not included. Interviews The measures described above were all administered to the para- legal trainees and to the control group. An additional evaluative tech— nique was the interviewing of a random sample (stratified for race and length of time since original incarceration in Michigan prisons) from the 3700 inmates inside the walls. These interviews were conducted about ten weeks after training began and again nine months later. The interviews (Appendix H), which lasted about thirty minutes apiece, were conducted in order to assess the inmates' support and knowledge of the paralegal training program. The interviews were con— ducted on an individual basis by four undergraduates from Michigan State 30 University and the author. The undergraduates were given instructional training and practice. The first training session consisted Of explana- tions of the research, the role Of the interviews, and the procedures to be followed in conducting the interviews. The second session focused more specifically on the interview forms and their use. Each interview- er then completed at least one practice interview with an inmate to be- come more familiar with both the interviewing procedures and the prison setting. Inter-rater reliability was computed on a thirteen percent sample Of the interviews and yielded ninety-three percent exact agree- ment. Test-retest reliability was computed on an interval of approxi- mately one week with seven percent of the interviewees. Eighty-six percent of the responses showed exact agreement over this time. At each interviewing time, a random sample Of one hundred inmates was sent letters explaining the purpose of the interview and asking them to report at a specific time and location. A schedule Of inter— views was given to the prison staff, and the inmates involved were placed "on call." Consequently, the inmates were allowed to report to an area in the prison regularly used for interviews with clergy and at- torneys. Eighty—nine Of the first group and eighty-one Of the second group were interviewed, although followbup letters were Often necessary. The demographic characteristics of the two groups were very similar; therefore, combined statistics will be reported. Sixty-four percent Of the interviewees were black, thirty-five percent were white, and one percent was Chicano. These percentages corresponded almost exactly to the racial composition of the prison. The average age was thirty-one, and the average amount Of time spent in the prison was eighteen months. 31 Training The aim of the paralegal curriculum was to establish a program that would include conventional paralegal skills, but would also reflect the special needs Of an inmate paralegal working in a prison setting. In- puts and resource material were solicited from the Institute of Continu- ing Legal Education, Washtenaw Community College; Ferris State College; the National Paralegal Institute; and Professor William Statsky Of the Antioch Law School. The resulting curriculum covered the legal profes- sion, basic skills (particularly researching, writing and interviewing), and legal theory and issues (with emphasis on criminal law, domestic relations, corrections and prisoners' rights, and constitutional law). A more complete outline of the curriculum is presented in Appendix I. Much of the teaching was to be done by members of the Michigan Bar Association who were asked to volunteer time in conducting classes. An article was published in Inter Alia, the Michigan Young Lawyers' Sec— tion newsletter, in late 1975 with a description of the program and its curriculum. After a number Of direct personal contacts by the training coordinator, thirty volunteer attorneys were recruited to teach forty- six paralegal classes. Another four classes were taught by the training coordinator. (See Appendix J for a complete list Of speakers, their af— filiations and class topics.) In addition, a paralegal trainee taught three classes on taxation, and an SMP jailhouse lawyer taught six classes on brief writing and research. Classes began in early February, 1976, and ended with graduation in October. Formal classes were held approximately twice per week in the prison law library, with each class lasting about three hours. The general format Of each class was a lecture for the first two-thirds Of 32 the class followed by a general discussion. Some class sessions made use of videotapes produced by the Institute for Continuing Legal Educa— tion dealing with probate law (seven tapes), domestic relations (five) and civil litigation (three). Occasionally, the training coordinator used sound recordings of various legal seminars and meetings he had at- tended. The paralegal trainees had regular assignments in the main text, Ag Introduction to Michigan Civil and Criminal Procedure (Holmes and George 1974) and from other sources. In addition, the trainees completed spe— cial exercises designed to provide practice in using the skills learned in the classroom and readings. Early projects involved writing legal memos on the basis Of facts presented to the trainees. Later, the trainees were given copies of transcripts and asked to prepare an appel- late case. This involved extensive research and brief writing, and cul- minated with the oral presentation of the case at a mock trial. Train- ees were regularly tested on material presented in classes and readings. The final aspect of the training was the apprenticeship the trainees completed in the prison legal aid clinic. The actual use of skills and techniques studied and discussed in and out of the classroom is an important part Of the education Of the paralegal trainees. Each paralegal was assigned to work on an average of ten cases while in training, beginning in the fourth month of training. The specific as- signments covered a range of paralegal activities: interviewing the client, researching pertinent issues, and preparing papers and letters for the case. These activities were supervised carefully by the staff attorney in charge of the legal clinic, who met with each paralegal on a regular basis to provide feedback and further instruction. CHAPTER III RESULTS The results Of this experiment will be presented in two sections. First, the findings regarding the measures completed by the paralegals and control group will be given. These consist of the tests of legal knowledge, assessments Of attitudes and perceptions, and measures con- cerning the use Of legal knowledge. These will be followed by the re— sults of the interviews Of the general inmate population which con- cerned their attitudes toward the program and their use of trainees as legal resources. Paralegal Trainee Measures Legal Knowledge Each item on the 130 item legal knowledge test was worth two points, making a potential total score Of 260. A completely correct answer earned two points, a partially correct answer (many questions had two parts) was given one point, and a total incorrect answer was given no credit. Because the measure had considerable internal consistency (Cron— bach's alpha = .87 and the average itemetotal correlation = .49), it was reasonable to conceive of the total score as a measure of legal knowledge. Before training, the two groups were almost identical in terms of their legal knowledge. The trainees had an average score Of 147.7 while the control group had an average score Of 147.4. Scores ranged from 110 to 179. 33 34 After training, the trainees' average score had increased to 188.3 while the control group average score of 151.4 indicated little change in their legal knowledge since the first testing. An analysis of vari- ance reveals that this difference over time was significant, the dif- ference between groups was significant, and the interaction between these two variables was significant. An omega-squared test revealed that these three factors accounted for a total Of fifty-five percent of the variance of all scores. A Scheffe planned comparison test confirmed the Obvious. The difference between groups occurred at the second test- ing only and the difference over time occurred within the experimental group only. Figure 1 illustrates the means for the two groups at the two tastings. Table 2 provides details Of the data analysis (the ana- lysis Of variance table, means and standard deviations, the omega- squared statistics and the Scheffe test results). 190 180 170 160 150 CONTROL GROUP 140 130 LEGAL KNOWLEDGE TEST SCORES 120 L 1 Before Training (Pre) After Training (Post) FIGURE 1: Legal Knowledge Test Scores 35 TABLE 2 Legal Knowledge Test - Total Scores 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training, After trainiggT Trainee 147.7 188.3 (n-10) (15.7) (6.5) GROUP Control 147.4 151.4 (n=7) (23.4) (19.0) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df 35 MS F p wz Group 1 710.1 710.1 7.75 <.025 .127 Subjects within groups 15 1373.9 91.6 Time 1 1385.0 1385.0 32.69 <.01 .286 Time x Group 1 689.5 689.5 16.27 <.Ol .134 Time x Subjects within groups 15 635.6 42.3 Total 33 4794.1 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After ' 48.71 <.Ol Control Group: Before-After .33 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .00 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 33.08 <.01 36 In addition to the fact that the trainees had relatively high scores at this second testing, they also had very little variation among scores. Seven of the ten trainees scored between 190 and 196; the other three scored 186, 182, and 173. Control group scores, on the other hand, ranged from 120 to 177. The standard deviations in Table 1 reflect this difference in the degree of variation. Specific content areas within the larger tOpic Of legal knowledge were examined separately. These subscales were created by using a com- bination of empirical and rational methods. Initially, the paralegal training coordinator grouped all Of the items into specific content areas. The resulting scales were analyzed to determine their internal consistency. Items were dropped from the scales until scales were in- ternally consistent. In some cases, items were moved to Other scales with which they were rationally and empirically consistent. Only those scales containing five or more items were considered reliable enough to report. The resulting scales measured knowledge of legal research meth— Ods (eighteen items), criminal law (thirteen), constitutional law (thir- teen), civil 1aw (ten), Michigan law (five), and tenant and landlord law (five). The scale name, the Cronbach's alpha for the scale, the items, and each item's correlation with the scale total (with the item itself removed from the total) are reported in Appendix L. Again using the Scheffe method, all of these scales, with the ex- ception Of tenant and landlord law, reflected statistically significant changes for the experimental trainee group, with no significant changes for the control group. Tenant and landlord law subscale scores did not differ for either group before or after training. The resulting scale means are presented in Table 3 and the details Of the 37 TABLE 3 Legal Knowledge Subtests - Average Scores Subtest Trainee Group Control Group (Total pos- Before After Before After sible points in parentheses) Research ** Methods (36) 15.70 32.20 15.86 17.14 criminal Law 13. 70 21.80** 10.43 14.57 (26) Constitutional ** Law (26) 12.60 20.70 11.29 12.71 Civil Law (20) 11.90 15.20* 11.57 10.00 Michigan Law ** (10) 1.90 6.40 1.57 .86 Tenant and Land- 7 80 7 80 8 00 8 30 lord Law (10) ' ° ' ' *Before-after comparison: p < .05 **Before-after comparison: p < .01 38 statistical analyses for those scales that yielded significant results can be found in Tables 4 through 8. Attitudes and Perceptions Attitudes toward the criminal justice system. The trainee and control group members made judgments about various aspects of the prison and the general criminal justice system using the semantic differential described earlier(see Appendix C). Each Of the nineteen concepts was rated on the ten dimensions. Individual judgments on these ten dimen— sions correlated quite highly. Consequently, the ten scores for each concept were summed to form one total score. The resulting alphas for these scales ranged from .86 to .97 with a mean alpha of .935. While this total score would rationally seem to be an overall evaluation of the concept, it is difficult to determine the meaning Of the score be- cause the dimension correlating the highest with the scale total changes from concept to concept. Furthermore, the meaning Of various dimen- sions varies with the different concepts. For instance, the availa- bility Of the prison and a defense lawyer mean radically different things to an inmate. Appendix K presents each concept, the Cronbach's alpha for the scale resulting from the sum of all dimensions used to rate the concept, the average correlation between the individual scores and the total score (minus the dimension itself) for each concept, and the dimension correlating the highest with the total (when the dimen- sion itself is not included in the total). Because each dimension was rated between one and seven, the result- ing sums of ten dimensions tOOk on a potential range of ten to seventy. A score of forty represented a neutral judgment, a score of ten 39 TABLE 4 Legal Research Methods Subtest - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training, After trainiggm Trainee 15.70 32.20 (n-lo) (9.69) (2.39) GROUP Control 15.86 17.14 (n-7) (9.84) (8.71) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df 53 MS F p w2 Group 1 457.1 457.1 4.87 <.05 .094 Subjects within groups 15 1408.4 93.9 Time 1 890.4 890.4 25.44 <.01 .226 Time x Group 1 476. 6 476.6 13.62 <.01 .116 Time X Subjects 15 525.0 35.0 within groups Total 33 3757.5 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 38.89 <.Ol Control Group: Before-After .16 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .00 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 9.94 <.01 40 TABLE 5 Criminal Law Subtest — Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After training“ Trainee 13.70 21.80 (n-IO) (4.74) (2.57) GROUP Control 10.43 14.57 (n-7) (6.53) (5.62) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 227.0 227.0 7.72 <.025 .146 Subjects within groups 15 441.2 29.4 Time 1 355.9 355.9 20.08 <.Ol .252 Time x Group 1 32.2 32.2 1.81 Time x Subjects 15 265.9 17.7 within groups Total 33 1322.2 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 18.53 <.01 Control Group: Before-After 3.39 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group 1.50 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 7.31 <.025 41 TABLE 6 Constitutional Law Subtest - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After training_' Trainee 12.60 20.70 (n-lO) (4.99) (3.16) GROUP Control 11.29 12.71 (n87) (5.88) (5.82) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df SS MS F a w2 Group 1 178.1 178.1 7.44 <.025 .122 Subjects within groups 15 359.0 23.9 Time 1 243.6 243.6 9.97 <.025 .174 Time x Group 1 91.6 91.6 3.75 Time x Subjects 15 366. 3 24.4 within groups Total 33 1238.6 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 13.44 <.01 Control Group: Before-After .29 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .30 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 10.99 <.01 42 TABLE 7 Civil Law Subtest - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training: After trainingm Trainee 11.90 15.20 (n-10) (4.53) (2.15) GROUP Control 11.57 10.00 (n-7) (4.54) (3.65) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df 88 MS F p w2 Group 1 62.9 62.9 3.27 Subjects within groups 15 288.3 19.2 Time 1 14.2 14.2 1.50 Time x Group 1 48.9 48.9 5.16 <.05 .070 Time x Subjects 15 141.9 9.5 within groups Total 33 556.2 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 5.73 <.05 Control Group: Before—After .91 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .02 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 5.79 <.05 43 TABLE 8 Michigan Law Subtest - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After trainingm Trainee 1.90 6.40 (xx-10) (1. 79) (1. 26) GROUP Control 1.57 .86 (n=7) (1.81) (1.57) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 71.0 71.0 22.22 <.01 .266 Subjects within groups 15 47,9 3.2 Time 1 47.0 47.0 23.56 <.01 .177 Time 3 Group 1 56.0 56.0 28.02 <.Ol .213 Time x Subjects 15 30.0 2.0 within groups Total 33 251.9 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 50.62 <.01 Control Group: Before-After .88 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .14 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 39,47 <.01 44 represented the most positive evaluation possible (towards the left side Of the scale, whereas a score of seventy represented the most negative score possible. Two Of five concepts related to the prison showed significant changes. First, the trainees' attitude toward the prison as a whole became significantly more negative,while the control group had no sig- nificant change. Second, the control group evaluated block Officers (guards) significantly more negatively at the second testing, while the trainees' opinions became slightly, but not significantly, more posi— tive. Judgments made about aspects Of the prison by both groups before and after training are presented in Table 9. Details Of the analyses of the two significant changes are presented in Tables 10 and 11. Several of the concepts related to the larger criminal justice system also showed changes over time, according to a 2 x 2 (time and condition) analysis of variance. The attitude Of the control group toward federal courts became significantly more negative at the second testing while the trainees kept an approximately constant and positive attitude. Attitudes toward the Supreme Court showed a similar trend with the trainees having an attitude significantly more positive than the control group after training. This difference in attitude was not significantly present at the initial testing. The trainee group also made a more positive evaluation of judges at the time of the second testing, although this cannot be attributed to the effect of training since the difference existed at both testing periods. The means for each group at each testing for all of the criminal justice system con- cepts are presented in Table 12. The data analyses for the significant differences are presented in Tables 13 through 15. 45 TABLE 9 Attitudes toward Aspects Of Jackson Prison - Average Scores (Standard Deviations in Parentheses) Aspect Trainee Group Control Group Before After Before After 1. Jackson Prison - 48.5 53.8* 53.0 55.0 Overall (9.8) (7.3) (13.7) (16.6) 2. Academic School 26.2 31.6 35.3 41.7 (12.7) (15.7) (12.1) (17.8) 3. Treatment Programs 35.8 39.1 43.1 47.1 (18.3) (13.5) (15.0) (15.5) 4. Block Counselors 38.3 37.8 36.0 45.7 (10.9) (8.8) (16.7) (19.1) 5. Block Officers 40.3 38.8 38.3 45.9* (6.7) (9.2) (13.6) (18.2) Note. Possible range of scores: 10 to 70. A score Of 40 indicates a neutral judgment. Scores lower than 40 indicate positive judgment, while scores higher than 40 indicate negative judgments. *Before-after group difference: .05 46 TABLE 10 Attitude Toward Jackson Prison - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before trainigg: After trainigg_' Trainee 48.50 53.80 (n-lO) (9.84) (7.32) GROUP Control 53.00 55.00 (n-7) (13.68) (16.60) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 66.9 66.9 .27 Subjects within groups 15 3703.0 246.9 Time 1 132.0 132.0 4.66 <.05 .024 Time x Group 1 22.4 22.4 .80 Time x Subjects 15 425.0 28.3 within groups Total 33 4349.4 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 4.96 <.05 Control Group: Before-After .49 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .34 After: Trainee Group-Control Group .02 47 TABLE 11 Attitude Toward Block Officers - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After training“ Trainee 40.30 38.80 (n-lO) (6.68) (9.15) GROUP Control 38.29 45.86 (n=7) (13.65) (18.17) 2. Analysis Of Variance Table Source df SS MS F _p w2 Group 1 52.4 52.4 .21 Subjects within groups 15 3755.9 250.4 Time 1 42.5 42.5 1.28 Time x Group 1 169.4 169.4 5.10 <.05 .030 Time x Subjects 15 498.1 33.2 within groups Total 33 4518.2 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After .34 Control Group: Before-After 6.03 <.05 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .07 After: Trainee Group-Control Group .82 Attitudes Toward Aspects of the Criminal Justice System 48 TABLE 12 Before and After the Training Program (Standard Deviations in Parentheses) Aspect Trainee Group Control Group Before After Before After Policemen 31.7 (8.5) 33.4 (9.7) 38.9 (15.5) 42.6 (22.0) Police Departments 32.6 (10.7) 37.9 (16.3) 39.3 (18.1) 41.6 (22.8) Judges 28.1a (8.4) 29.3 (8.7) 44.8a(20.0) 46.0 (21.0) Trial Courts 34.3 (9.5) 31.1 (9.3) 46.3 (18.4) 46.9 (20.1) Appeals Courts 31.4 (11.6) 30.2 (8.4) 38.3 (12.9) 43.7 (19.4) Federal Courts 25.0 (9.6) 26.8 (9.5) 28.7 (15.0) 40.1*(21.2) Supreme Court 27.5 (10.4) 26.2 (9.8) 37.7 (14.3) 45.4*(20.8) Defense Lawyers 30.1 (7.1) 29.5 (8.9) 36.1 (17.1) 40.0 (16.4) Prosecution Lawyers 33.6 (8.6) 35.1 (8.7) 45.1 (16.1) 46.9 (17.3) Parole Board 38.5 (11.6) 37.7 (9.7) 44.7 (22.4) 49.3 (18.4) Parole 32.5 (9.1) 36.1 (9.1) 37.7 (13.5) 44.4 (16.9) Laws 29.1 (8.6) 27.5 (10.7) 37.7 (11.9) 42.6 (20.2) Legal Profession 25.4 (7.8) 26.3 (8.7) 30.3 (11.7) 30.0 (16.4) Bar Association 22.4 (9.5) 22.9 (8.1) 29.0 (10.8) 29.0 (6.8) Note: Possible range of scores: 10 to 70. A score Of 40 indicates a neutral judgment. Scores lower than 40 indicate positive judg- ments, while scores higher than 40 indicate negative judgments. a. The average scores of the trainee and control groups before train- ing were significantly different (p<:.05). * Before-after group difference: p<:.05. 49 TABLE 13 Attitude Toward Federal Courts - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before trainigg. After trainigg_' Trainee 25.00 26.80 (n-lO) (9.62) (9.46) GROUP Control 28.71 40.14 (n87) (15.07) (21.18) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df 88 MS F 4p w2 Group 1 599.0 599.0 1.82 Subjects within groups 15 4932.2 328.8 Time 1 282.5 282.5 5.56 <.05 .033 Time x Group 1 190.9 190.9 3.76 Time x Subjects 15 761. 7 50. 8 within groups Total 33 6766.2 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After .32 Control Group: Before—After 8.99 <.01 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .17 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 2.23 50 TABLE 14 Attitude Toward Supreme Court - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After trainingm Trainee 27.50 26.20 (n-lO) (10.43) (9.78) GROUP Control 37.71 45.43 (n=7) (14.33) (20.81) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 1784.8 1784.8 5.54 <.05 .183 Subjects within groups 15 4831.5 322.1 Time 1 49.4 49.4 .88 Time x Group 1 167.3 167.3 3.00 Time x Subjects 15 837.8 55.9 within groups Total 33 7670.7 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After .15 Control Group: Before-After 3.72 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group 1.33 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 4.72 <.05 51 TABLE 15 Attitude Toward Judges - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training After training_' Trainee 28.10 29.30 (n-10) (8.42) (8.41) GROUP Control 44.86 46.00 (n=7) (20.00) (21.00) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 2304.6 2304.6 5.80 <.05 .210 Subjects within groups 15 5765.6 397.7 Time 1 11.8 11.8 .44 Time x Group 1 0 0 .00 Time x Subjects 15 400.2 26.7 within groups Total 33 8682.2 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After .27 Control Group: Before-After .17 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group 2.91 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 2.89 52 Preliminary correlation analyses indicated that the separate con- cepts presented in the semantic differential were not independent of each other. A factor analysis was done to explore more precisely the empirical relationships among all the concepts. A combination of the skree test and rational methods was used to establish two factors. The nineteen concepts related to the criminal justice and correctional sys- tems discussed above form one factor (see Table 16 for details of the factor analysis). A total score, representing an overall attitude to- ward the legal system was obtained by adding all the scores for the nineteen concepts comprising this factor. The differences among means was not significant. This lack of change in factor means, which by virtue of their composition of multiple responses was more reliable than single scores, indicated that significant attitude change did not take place. While attitudes toward some specific concepts might have truly occurred, these factor results make error Of measurement and chance other reasonable explanations for the apparent changes. The three remaining concepts forming the second factor are the paralegal training program, the teachers of the paralegal training pro- gram, and the self (asking each person to rate himself). These con- cepts will be considered individually later. A reasonable explanation Of the correlation among these concepts concerns the social desira- bility of these items. That is, it is socially desirable to consider oneself positively ("you would like me") and to rate the program high- ly, since the questionnaire was administered by a program-related per- son ("I like you"). The extent to which a person rated any of these three concepts positively predicted the evaluation of the other two. By this reasoning, if a person used one item to give a positive 53 TABLE 16 Semantic Differential Factor Analysis Factor Eigen Value Percentage of Variance 1 12.9 88.1 2 1.7 11.9 Factor 1 Factor 2 Loading Loading Communality SMP 66 .30 .53 Defense Lawyers 61_ .31 .47 Block Officers §1_ .00 .36 Block Counselors 68. -.27 .54 Prosecuting Lawyers 88_ .18 .81 Prison School .12_ .35 .63 Police Department 82_ .12 .68 Trial Courts .22_ .20 .89 Prison Treatment Programs 15_ .42 .74 Policemen .89 .06 .80 Supreme Court 85_ .26 .78 Appeals Court 84_ .24 .76 Parole Board 88_ .06 .78 Laws 82 .33 .78 Parole .82 .13 .69 Legal Profession .65 .40 .58 Federal Courts 88_ .11 .79 Judges 220 .24 .88 Bar Association 61. .41 .61 Paralegal Training Program .27 .84_ .78 Paralegal Training Teachers .09 .54 .30 Myself -.04 .68 .47 54 impression, he did so with all three. Differences (between groups and over time) in the factor scores, the sum of the three individual con- cept scores, were not significant. Both groups were asked one other question with respect to the cri- minal justice system. The question asked which of several factors would have been most important in keeping the inmate out of prison. Because of faulty instructions at the first administration of the mea- sures, only the second group of responses (after training) can be con- sidered. Consequently, a one—way analysis of variance was computed to note differences between groups. Eight of the ten trainees thought in- creased legal knowledge would have been most important, while only two of the seven controls felt this way. This difference was significant (F1,15-5.39, p .05). Three of the seven controls thought a fair trial would have helped the most. Since none of the trainees responded si- milarly, this difference was also significant (F1_15=6.6, p .025). Self perception. Both groups were asked to rate themselves on the ten dimensions of the semantic differential. Inmates in both the trainee and control groups had very positive and stable self-evalua— tions. The average for both groups measured before the training period was about twenty (an average of two on each of the ten seven-point scales) and these figures changed less than one point by the second measurement. Another series of six questions concerning self-perception was asked of both groups at each testing period (see Appendix D). In gen— eral, inmates in both groups reported that they made decisions effi— ciently, logically, and confidently, that they were persistent, fre- quently helped friends with problems, and were comfortable meeting 55 people. This was true for both groups before training, as well as after the training period. Separate analyses of variance were computed for each question. One of the changes over the course of the training program was significant according to an analysis of variance. The trainees reported that they more logically and carefully evaluated de- cision alternatives after training than before. The mean responses for each of these six questions are presented in Table 17, and the statistical analysis of the significant variable can be found in Table 18. The trainee and control groups were also asked to make predictions about their lives after release from prison. The groups gave very simi- lar judgments at the initial testing (with one exception to be discus- sed later) and did not change their opinions significantly on the thir- teen questions. Although the training program did not affect these at- titudes, the relative level of the attitudes is worth noting. The trainees throught they were about a year and a half away from release, which at this date can be seen to be an overly optimistic prediction. Most thought they would have employment arranged before they were re- leased or within a week following release. Most were quite sure they would get the kind of work they wanted and thought they would really like their new jobs. The average expected weekly salary was about $155, and most trainees thought they would be able to establish credit. The trainees were more cautious in their assessment of the likelihood that they would get a job where they would handle large amounts of cash; the average response was "maybe." In general the trainees said it would be very easy to relate to their families after release and a little less easy to relate to their 56 TABLE 17 Self Perception - Average Scores (Standard Deviations in Parentheses) Question Trainee Group Control Group Before After Before After 1. Very efficient decision- 5.1 6.4 5.0 5.6 maker on important (1.9) (.7) (1.6) (1.7) matters? 2. Logically and carefully 5.2 6.2* 5.4 5.7 evaluate decision alter- (1.4) (1.6) (1.1) (.5) natives? 3. Very confident of 5.8 6.5 6.3 5.3 decisions? ( 6) (.7) (.8) (2 4) 4. Very comfortable when 5.0 5.0 5.2 5 2 meeting people (1.4) (1.6) (1.4) (1 3) different from me? 5. Very frequently help 5.8 6.0 4.3 5.6 with friends' problems? (1.1) (1.8) (2.3) (1.4) 6. Always persistent in 4.8 5.8 5.7 5.6 completing frustrating (1.9) (1.8) (1.1) (1.7) task? Note. All ratings were made on 7-point scales. As presented here, 7 indicates maximum agreement with question, 1 maximum disagreement. *Before—after change significant (p < .025). 57 TABLE 18 Degree of Logic in Decision-Making - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before trainiggfi After training_' Trainee 2.80 1.80 (n-lO) (1.40) (1.62) GROUP Control 2.57 2.29 (n87) (1.13) (.49) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df SS MS F ,p w2 Group 1 .14 .14 .05 Subjects within groups 15 42.63 2.84 Time 1 4.24 4.24 8.24 <.025 .066 Time x Group 1 1.05 1.05 2.04 Time x Subjects 15 7.71 .51 within groups Total 33 55.76 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 9.80 <.01 Control Group: Before-After .53 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .08 After: Trainee Group-Control Group .35 58 former friends. It may be partly for this reason that the inmates ex- pexted to have "mostly different" friends after release. The trainees were unanimous in wanting more education following their releases, and most thought they would get the extra education they wanted. Finally, the trainees felt it was unlikely (but not extremely unlikely) that they would be arrested for another crime in the future. The one difference between groups occurred only at the initial testing. At that point, the trainees said they would have fewer of the same friends when they were released than did the control group. Al- though neither group changed significantly over time, the difference between groups at the second testing was not signigicant. Attitudes toward the paralegal training program. The inmates were asked to rate the paralegal training program and the teachers in the program using the ten dimensions on the semantic differential form. Again, the responses to the ten dimensions were summed because of the high correlation among them. The ratings are shown in Table 19. The trainee and control groups rated both the overall program and the teachers quite high at the beginning and again at the end of the train- ing. Although there are no significant differences between the groups, it is noteworthy that the trainees gave the paralegal teachers an even more positive rating after the training. The two groups also assessed the degree of correspondence between the publicized and real goals of the program. The ratings were made on a seven-point scale from 1 = "exactly as publicized" to 9 = "completely different from what was publicized." The trainee group average was 1.8 before training and 2.2 after; the control group average was 1.7 before training and 3.1 after. Although not statistically significant, there 59 TABLE 19 Ratings of the Paralegal Training Program and Its Teachers - Average Scores (Standard Deviations in Parentheses) Aspect Trainee Group Control Group Before After Before After Paralegal Training 21.7 21.4 21.9 24.3 Program (10.0) (10.1) (7.7) (4.6) Paralegal Teachers 24.8 16.5 22.6 22.8 (13.3) (6.5) (6.8) (8.1) Note. Range of scores: 10 to 70. positive rating; one of 70 a very negative rating. A score of 10 would be a very 60 was a tendency for the trainee group to rate the correspondence higher between actual and publicized goals than for the control group after training. Use Of Legal Knowledge Action on other inmates' legal problems. Members of both the trainee and control groups were asked before and after the training program about their actions on other inmates' legal problems (see Ap- pendix G). Table 20 shows the percentage of trainee and control group members asked to help other inmates. Before training, an average of thirty-nine percent of the inmates in both the trainee group and the control group helped with each different type of legal problem. Demand was especially great for help with appeals. Nine out of ten inmates in the trainee group and five out of seven in the control group had been asked to aid with this type of problem. After training, an average Of sixty-seven percent of trainee group members had been asked to help with each different kind of legal problem, a significantly larger per— centage than the thirty-two percent for the control group (z=4.26, p .01). The number Of inmates asked for aid for different categories of legal problems increased in the trainee group for seven of the nine categories from the first to second measurement and re- mained the same for the other two categories. The number in the con- trol group increased for three Of the problem categories, remained the same for one category, and decreased for the remaining five problem categories. It is important to understand that the trainees were instructed at the second testing to report only those requests for aid that 61 TABLE 20 Percentages of Trainee and Control Group Members Asked to Aid with Legal Problems - Before and After Training Problem Trainee Group Control Group Before After Before After Appeal of Conviction 90 90 71 86 Inmate Complaint against Prison 40 70 14 14 Disciplinary Notice from Prison 40 60 57 43 Personal Property Seizure 30 70 28 43 Divorce 60 100 28 43 Detainer 40 80 14 28 Debt 30 30 43 14 Parole 20 60 43 14 Other 203 40b 28C 0 Average 41 67 36 32 (Total Cases) (37) (60) (23) (20) Note. Other inmates had made these requests within the prior six months. aTaxes, civil suit. bTaxes, will, civil tort, insurance suit. cHousing, employment. 62 occurred outside of the clinic setting. In other words, these were only the informal requests for aid that might Occur in the yard or at a meal. Because of their formal roles as paralegals in the clinic, the inclusion of these requests would inflate the group and time differ- ences even further, but this would not be as valid a comparison. In addition to considering the number of trainee and control group members asked for aid, it is also interesting to examine the total num- ber of requests made on particular problems. Table 21 shows the number of inmates requesting aid of each group. Before training, the trainee group members received a total of 146 requests (14.6 requests per group member), with requests for help with appeals being particularly large (thirty-six percent of the total). The comparison group received a total of ninety—two requests before training (13.1 requests per group member), with appeal requests also being particularly large (forty- eight percent of the total). At the second measurement at the end of training, requests of trainee group members had more than quadrupled to 664 (or 66.4 requests per group member). These were only requests made in the preceding six months, so they do not include requests reported at the first testing. In contrast, requests of control group members stayed at about the same level (17.4 requests per member). An analysis of variance showed that the trainee group change in requests per group member was significant. In addition, for every specific legal problem examined at the time of the second testing, the trainees were asked for aid more often than the control group, and more often than the trainees themselves before training. Some of these differences between means were dramatic, although few were statistically significant, due to the high variances even within a single group at a given point in time. 63 TABLE 21 Number of Inmates Requesting Legal Help from Trainees and Control Group Members - Before and After Training PROBLEM GROUP Trainee Control Before After Before After Appeal of Conviction 53 187 44 84 Inmate Complaint Against Prison 13 73* l 2 Disciplinary Notice from Prison 19 54 16 8 Personal PrOperty Seizure 6 15 6 10 Divorce 12 162** 3 5 Detainer 5 48* 2 2 Debt 19 3O 4 2 Parole 5 76 5 9 Other 14 19 ll 0 TOTAL 146 664* 92 122 Average Number of Requests to Each Group Member 14.6 66.4 13.1 17.4 *Before-after group change: p<.05 **Before—after group change: p<.01 64 The number of times the trainees were asked for aid in dealing with a divorce increased significantly over time and was significantly higher than the control group at the second testing. The same was true for aid requested for a complaint against the prison. Aid requests of the trainees for help with a detainer also increased significantly over time while they did not for the control group. Tables 22 through 25 provide details of the statistical analyses of these significant vari- ables. Trainee and control group members also reported generally what they had done in response to these inmate requests and what the result of their actions had been. Although group members reported on indi- vidual legal problems, the actions and results have been summed across problems because of the small sample sizes for some individual problems. Table 26 shows the actions generally taken by group members. Whereas members of the trainee group were most likely to undertake legal action before training, they changed their behavior after training, referring seventy-five percent of the inmates to the legal aid clinic (as they were instructed to do as participants in the training program) and taking legal action in only fifteen percent of the cases. The control group members, on the other hand, were much more likely than trainees to undertake legal action after the training program period (eighty percent) and referred no one to the legal clinic. The results of these actions taken by trainee and control group members are shown in Table 27. Before training, a majority of the trainee group (about sixty-five percent) and nearly a majority of the control group (about forty-eight percent) believed that the problems had been solved or had at least improved. After training, these 65 TABLE 22 Total Number of Requests for Legal Aid - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training, After trainingm Trainee 14.60 66.40 (n-lO) (12.17) (73.47) GROUP Control 13.14 17.43 (n87) (17.83) (17.50) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 5235.7 5235.7 2.723 Subjects within groups 15 28838.9 1922.6 Time 1 8832.5 8832.5 5.337 <.05 .097 Time x Group 1 4648.0 4648.0 2.808 Time x Subjects 15 24826.5 1655.1 within groups Total 33 72381.5 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 8.11 <.025 Control Group: Before-After .04 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .00 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 5.34 <.05 66 TABLE 23 Number of Requests for Aid with Divorce - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training: After trainigg_' Trainee 1.20 16.20 (n-lo) (1.23) (14.56) GROUP Control .43 .71 (o-7) (.79) (1.11) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source (if 55 MS F p w2 Group 1 544.1 544.1 8.36 <.025 .31 Subjects within groups 15 976.6 65.1 Time 1 679.5 679.5 10.66 <.01 .168 Time It Group 1 445.8 445.8 7.00 <.025 .131 Time It Subjects 15 955.7 63.7 within groups Total 33 3601.8 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 47.07 <.Ol Control Group: Before-After .00 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .04 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 15.50 <.01 67 TABLE 24 Number of Requests for Aid with Complaints Against Prison--Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before trainiggi After trainiggm Trainee 1.30 7.30 (n-lO) (2.50) (9.93) GROUP Control .14 .29 (n=7) (.50) (.76) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df SS MS F p w2 Group 1 137.5 137.5 4.68 <.05 .08 Subjects within groups 15 441.1 29.4 Time 1 109.4 109.4 3.24 Time x Group 1 70.6 70.6 2.09 Time x Subjects 15 507.4 33.8 within groups Total 33 1266.0 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 5.33 <.05 Control Group: Before-After .00 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .19 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 6.87 <.025 68 TABLE 25 Number of Requests for Aid with Detainers - Data Analysis 1. Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) TIME Before training, After trainingm Trainee .50 4.80 (n-lO) (.71) (6.20) GROUP Control .29 .29 (n87) (.76) (.49) 2. Analysis of Variance Table Source df 55 MS F p w?- Group 1 46.0 46.0 3.54 .066 Subjects within groups 15 194.9 13.0 Time 1 54.4 54.4 5.10 <.05 .087 Time x Group 1 38.1 38.1 3.57 .054 Time x Subjects 15 160.0 10.7 within groups Total 33 493.4 3. Scheffe Test Means Analyzed F p Trainee Group: Before-After 8.64 <.025 Control Group: Before-After .00 Before: Trainee Group-Control Group .18 After: Trainee Group-Control Group 6.44 <.05 69 TABLE 26 Actions Generally Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Legal Problems of Other Inmates — Group Percentages Before and After Training ACTION GROUP Trainee Control Before After Before After Took legal action 46.0 15.0 26.1 80.0 Talked with concerned parties 29.7 1.7 17.4 0.0 Wrote letters 0.0 5.0 26.1 0.0 Did research 18.9 3.3 8.7 5.0 Referred to Legal Aid Clinic 0.0 75.0 0.0 0.0 No specific action or advice 5.4 0.0 21.7 15.0 TOTAL PERCENTAGE 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 (TOTAL CASES) (37) (60) (23) (20) 70 TABLE 27 Result of Actions Generally Taken by Trainee and Control Group Members on Legal Problems of Other Inmates - Group Percentages Before and After Training RESULT GROUP Trainee Control Before After Before After Problem became worse 0.0 1.7 0.0 0.0 Problem stayed the same 2.7 8.3 8.7 10.0 Can't tell yet 32.4 46.7 43.5 20.0 Problem improved somewhat 18.9 23.3 8.7 40.0 Problem solved 16.0 20.0 39.1 30.0 TOTAL PERCENTAGE 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 (TOTAL CASES) (37) (60) (23) (20) 71 Optimistic assessments dropped off somewhat in the trainee group and increased in the control group (seventy percent). For the purpose of analysis, the various responses possible to this question of results were given scores. "Problem became worse" was given a score of one. "Problem stayed the same" was given a two. " and "problem solved" "Can't tell yet," "problem improved somewhat, were given scores of three, four, and five, respectively. Using these scores, a two-way analysis of variance (groups and time) was computed on the results of advice given by the two groups to other inmates. There were no significant results. Action on personal legal problems. The trainee and control groups reported on their own legal problems, the action they had taken on them, the result of the action, and their plans for the future (see Appendix F). The groups were similar in both the number and types of problems they had had in the preceding six months. At the first testing, the trainees reported 2.8 problems per person, while the control group re- ported 3.0 problems per person. At the time of the second testing, both groups reported 2.1 problems per person. This difference over time was not significant. At both times, appeals were the most fre- quently reported problem, followed by complaints against the prison. Table 28 presents the problems reported by each group at each time, along with the percentage of the total number of problems for the com- bined (trainees and controls) groups since the two were similar. 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