As the need for mental health services in correctional settings became more clear in the mid-1970's, the idea of providing correctional psychologists with practice standards emerged at AACP business meetings during the late 1970's. The idea became more crystallized during the annual congress of the American Correctional Association (ACA) in 1978, and it was resolved that AACP would have a set of standards by the August 1979 ACA congress. The first draft of AACP's standards that emerged reflected principles found in a variety of other standards. This first draft, entitled "Standards for Psychological Services in Adult Jails and Prisons," was presented to the AACP congress in August 1979. The integration of membership comments with the initial draft resulted in the first edition of the AACP practice standards. The 1980 standards remained the only comprehensive set of practice guidelines for correctional psychologists as well as correctional organizations within which psychological services were provided; however, the original task force recognized that the standards would need periodic updating. For the second edition of the standards, see NCJ-184536. 9 references