On the Count

About the Book

The decade of the 1970’s was a fascinating chapter in the history of American correctional facilities, especially in the northeast. It was as though the social tumult of the 1960’s had contagiously spilled over and into the sub-cultural existence of convicted felons in correctional facilities. The corrections world of the 70’s might be viewed as a resurgence of “Freedom’s Ferment”, Alice Felt Tyler’s brilliant account of Americans’ quest for social reform and utopian life in the first half of the nineteenth century. Among the frightening events of the 70’s were deadly prison riots, especially New York’s Attica Correctional Facility, inmate strikes, correction officer strikes, the infiltration of the deadly AIDS virus among prisoners, and the first murder in USA history of a female correction officer on duty in a maximum security prison.

On a positive note, a few prison systems began to introduce cutting edge, mental health services for inmates within each maximum security prison, based on a community mental health model.

“On The Count” exposes the reader to many challenging and interesting, true experiences to enrich one’s understanding of the mosaic_ often blood-stained, of daily life in the corrections community at that time. Many challenges in prisoner management have not changed since then.

About the Author

Michael Boccia, Ph.D., has been a psychologist and business consultant for forty-one years and has served in numerous clinical and organizational settings during that time. His theoretical orientation has been cognitive-behavioral and his philosophical perspective is to generally maximize autonomy in clients. In the workplace, the goals are optimal enhancement of job performance and job satisfaction at all levels in organizations. Dr. Boccia is currently focusing his professional work almost exclusively in mental-health consultation with active duty military populations on military bases. He has worked in private practice, with law enforcement, corporate populations, leadership coaching, and doing a wide variety of workshops and training. One special interest has been Emotional Intelligence, which offers a unique method of mind/emotion management and significantly strengthens leadership potential in any organization. Dr. Boccia studied a variety of disciplines in his undergraduate work including history, philosophy and engineering while ultimately earning a Ph.D. in psychology. More recently, he earned the status of Certified Correctional Health Professional (CCHP). He is a member of many professional and civic organizations and frequently teaches as an adjunct at local colleges. Dr. Boccia resides in southwest Florida but his professional activities will not be exclusively confined to any particular geographic region. Peter Mars is a forty-year veteran of law enforcement, twenty-five of those years concurrent as a Christian minister serving several denominations during that time and more recently as an adjunct college professor in Maine teaching criminal justice. Mars is the author of five true-crime books: The Tunnel, A Taste for Money, The Key, The Chaplain, and Alternative Measures, and the co-author with John Butler (retired chief of police for Mansfield, Ohio and Sanibel Island, Florida) of The Best Suit in Town. He is also the writer of three books for other authors. His latest work, The Gold of Troy, will be due out late 2011. He recently assisted Dr. Menelaos Mickey Demos in putting together a book called Life in Mani - Today, a story about the freedom of living in southern Greece. Mars currently lives with his wife, Margery, in south central Maine.