Volume II

“If nothing changes, then nothing changes.”

If you heard this phrase “If nothing changes, nothing changes,” you’d likely think it’s a cliché statement about self improvement and growth. You might even think it’s something you might hear in a recovery meeting, a motivational speech, on Pinterest, or on a poster about life in a library... What most people don’t know is that those words are a weight held in the Arkansas correctional system. That quote has been recited in classrooms, printed in workbooks, and repeated for decades across programs that have been run by Arkansas Community Correction (ACC). Those programs designed to help people change their thinking before they return home.

The roots that dig deep from that statement goes all the way back to the recovery movement of the mid 20th century. It first was adopted in the early Alcoholics Anonymous literature and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. It was to serve as a reminder that sobriety and healing require real transformation, not just time. In other words, actions and steps forward are what create that change. The words were never meant to shame; they were meant to empower. It said “…your life doesn’t change because the calendar turns, it changes because you do.” When therapeutic models began to influence prison reform in the 1980s and 1990s, especially as addiction and cognitive-behavioral programs entered correctional facilities, that same statement was brought inside the walls for a purpose. It became a pillar of rehabilitation programs across the country. Why? Because it was considered a good way to influence and help people in prison or on supervision look inward and reflect on their choices they’ve made.

Arkansas adopted many of those national models as part of its transition from the Department of Community Punishment to what became Arkansas Community Correction. The state introduced classes like Thinking for a Change, Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT), and Substance Abuse Treatment Programs. These were all structured around one core idea: You must change your thoughts to change your life. The slogan was printed on walls, repeated in group circles, and drilled into inmates or participants who were more often than not, desperate to prove that they were capable of change. What most of society doesn’t realize is that the problem was never the message, it was how the system lived in it.

Inside our state’s ACC facilities, the phrase became an influence for people to be urged to reinvent themselves through classes and self-reflection while surrounded by a system that rarely changed its own environment, practices, and/or priorities. The same change that is always demanded of participants is not reflected in the structure of the institutions we have. While the curriculums tell them to process trauma, the system denies consistent access to licensed therapists. While people are told to find stability, the funding for transitional housing and job training remains minimal still to this day. While what little programs we have preach personal accountability, the institutional accountability has lagged behind. There is endless FOIA data year after year proving that less than three percent of the Department of Corrections’ combined budget goes toward rehabilitation and programming.

There is a historical shift from rehabilitation to management that has reshaped the entire meaning of that phrase altogether. What started as a mission to guide towards inner transformation has gradually become a slogan of compliance. It’s something people are told, not something they’re being helped to live. Over time, “If nothing changes, nothing changes” has been absorbed into the bureaucracy of parole reports, progress logs, and mandatory classes. It’s now nothing but paperwork and that looking pristine, instead of actual practice and actionable steps reflecting it.

If we take time to trace it back to its origins, it would show where the rooms of recovery circles, the early days of reform likeminded corrections and how it was never meant to excuse anything that hasn’t changed. Ironically enough, it’s meant to expose it all. This is a mirror for the system as much as for the individual. The statement challenges every structure that repeats old cycles while expecting new outcomes. That includes the state itself. Additionally it’s a derivative of the definition of insanity from Narcotics Anonymous that was mentioned in Volume I.

When we say "If nothing changes, nothing changes,” we’re not borrowing a cliché. We are working to restore its originally designed purpose. We’re saying that until Arkansas addresses the trauma, poverty, and policy that feed this cycle, no amount of slogans or step-programs will create the kind of restoration this state claims to stand for nor the claim that they’re actually doing it.