The DU Lounge

and my husband is incarcerated here. He is 81, and had a TBI at 21, ao was a sitting duck for dementia, and is now in the facility which is on the grounds of the state mental hospital But he wasn't always. For years he was in a private prison under contract to the state, and they had for a time a service dog training program there. And then they didn't. I do need to say, because this isn't true everywhere, private prisons under contract to Colorado are closely monitored to be in compliance with the state DOC policies. The state even assigns a full time ombudsman to each private prison. So they are not run like crap. But a lot is still going to depend on the warden. And I don't necessarily mean whether the warden is empathetic or zero sum, but whether the warden feels qualified to supervise it, and whether or not he feels the staff is up to the supervision they need to do. I wasn't able to speak at any length with inmates who were in the program, just knew that some were allowed to bring their trainee pups to the visiting room and meet their families. It was clear they were proud and happy to be in the program - and what puppy isn't adorable, even to me, and I'm a cat person. As far as I know it worked and everyone benefitted - all the pups graduated. The state has no specific policy against animals - where hubs is now there is a prison dog who has an inmate assigned to care for him. When the dog was adopted he weighed over a hundred pounds, but is now about 75 pounds, where he should be. And you know it's extremely difficult to get an animal to lose weight - you can't explain to them that it's for their health and longer life, they just know they're hungry. I've met the dog, and he is very affectionate and happy to meet people but also clearly specially attached to his handler. He looks like a black lab but I doubt he is purebred. He's nor a service dog (though he likely functions as a therapy dog😊.)

I have no personal knowledge of cat experiments - just what I've seen Cat Daddy publicize. But what I've seen of that has appeared to be very successful.

If you want to get something started in your state, the first thing to do is to make sure there is no state legislation or state corrections department policy absolutely prohibiting animals in prisons. Then the next thing to do is fnd a way to get to one or more wardens, probably through the state corrections department or possibly through a group outside the prisons which exists to support inmates, and there are many, some local and some with wider scope. There's one in Oregon called 7th Step which I'm pretty dure is confined to Oregon - I learned of it though a friend, now deceased, but who did a lot of prison work. Sorry I can't just now call a national one to mind (I'm 79 and still caring for myself, but I do forget things.) but search engines are your friend. I would expect it to be one prison at a time, so the more wardens you know, the better your chances.

Sorry, I wasn't intending to write a novel, but I was trying to answer what you asked to the best of my knowledge. I hope I at least came close to that.