In his autobiography "Flasback," Tim Leary recounts trying to find a legitimate, socially beneficial use for LSD contrary to the mind control stuff the CIA was focusing on. He knew that mere recreational use to make one feel all peace and love and pretty colors would never gain favor with the government types (indeed, there was legislation afoot to make LSD illegal), so he got the idea and the permission to try it on habitual criminals in a prison somewhere in one of the New England states (Vermont? Mew Hampshire? can't remember...someplace like that).

He selected prisoners for whom the criminal justice system was a revolving door - in and out and in again was all these guys had ever known. This particular prison had high recidivism.

So he conducted scheduled and controlled "therapy sessions" in which the prisoners were given doses of LSD and then they sat around and talked about things, guided by Leary at crucial points when a particular inmate had an "epiphany" or a particularly poignant "insight." Sort of like psychedelic group therapy or a psychedelic counseling session.

Leary recalls being a little uneasy around some of these guys while they were high. Some of them were violent - rapists, murderers, armed robbers - and he wasn't sure how they'd react. Fortunately, there wasn't a single incident that would've ultimately jeopardized the experiment.

After the experiment ended and all the data had been statistically analyzed, Leary found that, compared to a control group, the rate of recidivism for his group of inmates went down significantly. Leary hypothesized that this result was due to the effects of LSD. LSD had shown his experimental group that there were alternative ways of viewing and perceiving life and one's journey through it, and LSD had provided those who partook of it a profound and life-changing experience - it had had such an indelible effect on those inmates that a lot of them decided to do something else besides "a life of crime."

Shortly thereafter, recreational use of LSD was declared illegal and other than its use in studies of a military nature (and perhaps a few clinical studies as it pertained to mental illness), the beneficial uses of LSD were no longer the subject of any serious experimentation (except by individuals doing their own personal "studies").

Surely Leary published his findings and this experiment could be retrieved for review online (through Harvard, maybe?).