Therapeutic Communities in English Prisons

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Therapeutic Communities in English Prisons

• Barbara Rawlings

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Number of TCs

• Democratic five prisons containing a total of
  12 therapeutic communities. One of these is for
  women
• Drugs treatment five TCs in five different
  prisons. One is for women.

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Location of the drugs TCs
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The five drug TCs
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Management

• All TCs are run as a partnership between a
  national drug agency and the prison service.
• Management of the TC is shared between the prison
  and the agency
• Staff come from the prison and the agency
• The contracts run for 5-6 years

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Accreditation

• Correctional Services Accreditation Panel
• Programmes should reduce reconvictions
• Treatment should address dynamic risk factors
• Treatment based on evidence of effectiveness
• A convincing model of change
• Detailed descriptions of the programme, staffing,
  training and evaluation

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And then

• One of the TCs produced a set of manuals which
  were awarded provisional accreditation.
• It was decided that all the TCs should use the
  same regime, and that this would be the
  accredited model.

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Re-bidding

• This resulted in one of the partnership agencies
  losing its contract to run the TC it had set up
  in 1995.
• This meant that the TC found itself under new
  management with new agency staff.

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The accredited programme

• Residents stay about one year
• 3 stages induction, primary, re-entry
• Residents live and work on the wing.
• Structured days with meetings, encounter groups,
  peer support groups, work, development groups,
  activities and individual key-working.
• A hierarchical structure, with senior residents
  and graduates as role models

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Getting referrals

• CARATs Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice
  and Throughcare.
• Referrals from inside the prison
• Referrals from outside the prison
• Problems of demotivation and lodgers

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Lodgers

• I think community treatment pulls people in more
  than it keeps them out.

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Staffing issues

• Understaffing leads to audit failure and lowered
  effectiveness
• Prison officers work on shift patterns
• Staff teams are a mix of prison officers, prison
  civilians and staff from the treatment agency.
• Core staff and support staff

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Relations with the host prison

• Managed by awareness training and visits
• Advertising successes, graduation ceremonies
• Sometimes problems caused by early leavers who
  continue to be disruptive on the wings

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Management

• Team of three
• Treatment manager
• Programme manager
• Throughcare manager

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Recruitment to staff

• Core staff and support staff
• application
• presentation
• interview
• Other managers often get appointed by the prison

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The work hierarchy

• Induction and primary phase
• Cleaning
• Servery
• Administration
• Activities
• Workshop
• Applications and interviews for all jobs

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Re-entry

• Education
• Gardening
• Recycling

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Re-entry experience

• Weve got people up at education who are being
  verbally abused, and theyve got to learn to deal
  with that. When theyve been in the programme
  for nine months they should have the coping
  skills to deal with that. They come back and
  think Oh, thats the aim for me of re-entry.

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Residents responsibilities

• Senior residents and graduates
• facilitating groups
• induction
• awareness training
• All residents
• Pull-ups and encounters
• Act as if

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Accreditation

• Minimum requirements to run a TC
• Different prisons provide different buildings
• Some prisons have not provided a full staff team
• Still difficulties in establishing peer-led
  groups in some TCs
• Consequences of failing an audit

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Evaluation

• Main aim of a programme is to reduce re-offending
• But prisoners often get more than one type of
  treatment
• Need for multi-modal research

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Drake Hall

• A rehab programme now changing to a TC
• 18-22 weeks
• Graduates move to their own wing
• One paid prison position for a graduate
• More attention to sexual abuse, sex working and
  domestic violence to reflect residents
  experiences.

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Were not doing this to make your lives worse
we want to stop you coming back into prison.