A Prison Program for the Rehabilitation of Alcoholics (1942)

THE FOLLOWING is an information sheet written by Clinton T. Duffy, who from 1940 until 1952 was warden of San Quentin Prison, then the nation's largest penal institution. Duffy made the rehabilitation of prisoners a priority, but he believed that no amount of education, vocational training, or rehabilitation could help a prisoner if his alcoholism wasn't dealt with. In March 1941--just six years after AA began and two years after the publication of the Big Book--Duffy introduced the first AA program behind prison walls. He had the foresight to see that the great advantage of AA lay in the fact that members helped each other. Addressing the First International AA Conference at Cleveland in 1950, Duffy said that only an alcoholic could truly understand the problems of alcoholism: "They, and they alone, would know the road back, because they had made the hectic journey themselves. . .both ways."