In Unit 104, inmates governed themselves. One way they did this was by calling out each other for not putting forth their best effort, for getting up late, sleeping during the day, for lying or not making their bed. This went against everything that drug addiction and custody taught them. Dissolving the criminal code, learning to postpone immediate gratification and combat addiction—it all required using criticism to fuel personal change. In neuroscience terms, it was part of strengthening the prefrontal cortex in its battle with the nucleus accumbens’s me-first impulse. In 104, they called it
...more
