Factors Affecting Client Motivation in Therapeutic Community Treatment for Offenders in Delaware, Summary Report 1997-1999

• NCJ Number: 182358
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 5 pages
• Grant Number(s): 97-RT-VX-K0044
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation

Annotation

This report summarizes an assessment of the factors that affect client motivation in therapeutic community treatment for offenders in Delaware's correctional settings.

Abstract

Parts of Delaware's Therapeutic Community Continuum of residential treatment for drug abusing prisoners have existed for almost 10 years. The continuum is based on a combination of primary treatment in prison, secondary treatment in community-based work release, and tertiary treatment in aftercare. This evaluation sought to expand on the existing process and outcome evaluation efforts. More reliable outcome criteria and new information on circumstances, motivations, and appropriateness of individual client characteristics for treatment were expected to significantly increase the ability to select appropriate clients for treatment and to improve the likelihood of treatment success. The research evaluated the new program expansion of the CREST therapeutic community program; accessed official correctional and criminal justice records to improve recidivism outcome criteria; and made retrospective use of existing client treatment files to improve control variables and ability to model program engagement for inclusion in multivariate outcome models. Among the findings of the research is that long-term (3 years) effects are most apparent when residential treatment is followed by aftercare. 10 references