by Natasha Haverty
North Country Public Radio
September 28, 2012

Even critics of [shock incarceration] agree that this kind of commitment among the staff is valuable. Jeffrey Butts directs the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College. Butts says that if the only contribution of this program is to make the staff focus on structure, and having a theory that they follow so that their behavior is consistent and they respond consistently to people and incidents as they come up, then this is preferable to a facility or correctional program with no structure and no plan. “But that does not mean that there is some magic potion that they’ve discovered,” says Butts.