square, euphemistically called seclusion rooms. Furniture in each consisted of a one-piece stainless steel bed bolted to the floor. The windows in the steel doors were shock-resistant glass reinforced with wire mesh, too small for a human body to pass through if the glass were broken. Video cameras, recessed in the ceilings out of patient reach, broadcast twenty-four hours per day on a bank of monitors at the Nurses’ Station.
Only the plastic-covered bedding was vulnerable to assault. The thin mattresses and pillows occasionally got shredded or eaten, but it was the sheets, provided for patient comfort by Californialaw, that made the staff nervous. Before coming to Clevinger, Alison had not known that you could hang yourself—quickly—without your feet leaving the floor.
The Clevinger Administration Building was a different world from Three-Psych. Here the doors were not locked. Jephson’s outer office was spacious, with the luxury of a large and ungrated window.
Paula Rivinius, Jephson’s secretary, was on the phone. Mrs. R, as she was known on the wards, was dressed in a peacock-patterned sheath of lavender, purple, and cobalt. It was low-cut, slinky, laden with jewels, an outfit more at home at a Las Vegas dinner show featuring Tom Jones than in a hospital office. She was in her late forties, but worked hard to look ten years younger, and brought it off with fair success. Her longish hair was dark blond, the once black and now graying roots dyed and teased into careful disarray. Good legs and generous breasts allowed her to look Rubenesque rather than plump. Indigo eyeshadow and heavy jewelry lent an exotic, vaguely Eastern touch, as of a Hungarian gentlewoman in reduced circumstances.
She looked up over cat’s-eye glasses and held up two fingers for minutes. From the conversation, it was clear that she was trying to place a patient in a halfway house. Alison walked to the window, her suspicions widening again to includeMrs. R among those who might know about the phony NGIs. Paula had been with Jephson since the program’s start. She was divorced, Jephson never married, and Alison was sure that Mrs. R would be only too happy to scratch whatever itches the great man might have.
The door to Jephson’s inner office remained closed as Mrs. R talked on.
After almost two years of working for the man, Alison knew almost nothing about him personally. He was aloof, distant, a behaviorist with a mechanistic model of therapy that combined drugs with behavior modification.
At least, that was the operative assumption. Since his therapy sessions with the NGIs were conducted privately, no one else really knew what took place.
But a scenario was taking shape in her mind.
Many psychiatrists were reluctant to perform court-ordered evaluations, for good reason. The pay was almost nothing and the time demands great. The work itself was depressing and thankless, with grim prison visits and human beings at their worst. Trials and hearings were likely to bring attacks from attorneys, seeking to belittle professional competence and even verging into the personal.
But Jephson performed dozens of such evaluations per year, usually on cases that received no publicity. These almost never went to trial. They were settled at hearings among overworked, disinterested, state-appointed attorneys and judges.Jephson’s backup evaluations were usually performed by Vikram Ghose, a timid man from India who was on a continuously provisional status, without a license to practice independently in the United States, but whom Jephson had hired at Clevinger.
Suppose that, once in a while, the tumblers lined up to present low-profile cases, offenders with histories that suggested mental illness. These men screened by Jephson in private pre-hearing sessions. He then selecting, not the genuinely mentally ill, but sociopaths who might be keenly intelligent, especially in their own interest. Shading evaluations and obliquely coaching to present them as
Only the plastic-covered bedding was vulnerable to assault. The thin mattresses and pillows occasionally got shredded or eaten, but it was the sheets, provided for patient comfort by Californialaw, that made the staff nervous. Before coming to Clevinger, Alison had not known that you could hang yourself—quickly—without your feet leaving the floor.
The Clevinger Administration Building was a different world from Three-Psych. Here the doors were not locked. Jephson’s outer office was spacious, with the luxury of a large and ungrated window.
Paula Rivinius, Jephson’s secretary, was on the phone. Mrs. R, as she was known on the wards, was dressed in a peacock-patterned sheath of lavender, purple, and cobalt. It was low-cut, slinky, laden with jewels, an outfit more at home at a Las Vegas dinner show featuring Tom Jones than in a hospital office. She was in her late forties, but worked hard to look ten years younger, and brought it off with fair success. Her longish hair was dark blond, the once black and now graying roots dyed and teased into careful disarray. Good legs and generous breasts allowed her to look Rubenesque rather than plump. Indigo eyeshadow and heavy jewelry lent an exotic, vaguely Eastern touch, as of a Hungarian gentlewoman in reduced circumstances.
She looked up over cat’s-eye glasses and held up two fingers for minutes. From the conversation, it was clear that she was trying to place a patient in a halfway house. Alison walked to the window, her suspicions widening again to includeMrs. R among those who might know about the phony NGIs. Paula had been with Jephson since the program’s start. She was divorced, Jephson never married, and Alison was sure that Mrs. R would be only too happy to scratch whatever itches the great man might have.
The door to Jephson’s inner office remained closed as Mrs. R talked on.
After almost two years of working for the man, Alison knew almost nothing about him personally. He was aloof, distant, a behaviorist with a mechanistic model of therapy that combined drugs with behavior modification.
At least, that was the operative assumption. Since his therapy sessions with the NGIs were conducted privately, no one else really knew what took place.
But a scenario was taking shape in her mind.
Many psychiatrists were reluctant to perform court-ordered evaluations, for good reason. The pay was almost nothing and the time demands great. The work itself was depressing and thankless, with grim prison visits and human beings at their worst. Trials and hearings were likely to bring attacks from attorneys, seeking to belittle professional competence and even verging into the personal.
But Jephson performed dozens of such evaluations per year, usually on cases that received no publicity. These almost never went to trial. They were settled at hearings among overworked, disinterested, state-appointed attorneys and judges.Jephson’s backup evaluations were usually performed by Vikram Ghose, a timid man from India who was on a continuously provisional status, without a license to practice independently in the United States, but whom Jephson had hired at Clevinger.
Suppose that, once in a while, the tumblers lined up to present low-profile cases, offenders with histories that suggested mental illness. These men screened by Jephson in private pre-hearing sessions. He then selecting, not the genuinely mentally ill, but sociopaths who might be keenly intelligent, especially in their own interest. Shading evaluations and obliquely coaching to present them as
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