Cognitive/Anger Management

In addition to general education classes, the Detention Facility also offers a series of cognitive education/anger management classes to encourage participants to explore the link between their beliefs and their behavior. The basic premise of these classes can be summarized as follows:

Change your thoughts and you change your feelings.
Change your feelings and you change your behavior.
Change your behavior and you change your life.

The series of cognitive/anger management classes takes at least six months to complete. Inmates are given a variety of weekly writing, thinking and behavioral assignments in which they practice methods of effective problem solving, learn to become more flexible thinkers, identify strategies for reducing anger and stress, and learn to replace a passive or aggressive style of problem solving with an assertive style. The inmates learn to assess their role in justifying poor or illegal behavior, and identify coping techniques to prevent emotion from swamping the ability to think. Approximately 60 inmates receive cognitive/anger management education each week.