Desirable Features of a Therapeutic Community in a Prison (From Therapeutic Communities in Corrections, P 34-40, 1980, Hans Toch, ed. - See NCJ-72429)

• NCJ Number: 72432
• Author(s): M Jones
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: Praeger Publishers
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The principles of the therapeutic community peer-group concept and its application within a prison environment are described and contrasted with the medical community model.

Abstract

The concept of the therapeutic community originated in 1947 as applied to hospitals, prisons, and other social organizations. The basic principles of a therapeutic community are aimed at growth toward social maturity in a peer-group therapeutic culture. In such a prison therapeutic community, staff members act as role models and help inmates to learn the fundamentals of group dynamics, problem solving, and decisionmaking by consensus. The medical and the therapeutic communities are distinct; the former is relatively authoritarian or closed, and the latter essentially democratic and open. Transition from a previously closed system to a more open one is organization development, a process of developmental stages and principles such as two-way communication; identification of goals, problems, and priorities; compromise; internal commitment; implementation; and evaluation. Currently, overall attraction of the therapeutic community concept has peaked because the medical profession, colleges and other institutions resist the democratization (shared decisionmaking) of an elitist professonal tradition. An example of a successfully implemented therapeutic community in a prison in Asklepieion, run by Martin Groden at Marion, Ill. from 1968 to 1974. Modeled after Synanon in California and Eric Berne's transactional analysis, Asklepieion used Gestalt therapy, primal therapy, behavior modification, and effective role models to further inmate personal grouwth through problem solving and decisionmaking as a social process. The result was a group of incarcerated serious offenders who established and maintained their own rules and their therapeutic culture without interference by law enforcement officers. For the future, viable models of a therapeutic community are needed, that can be demonstrated and experienced at first hand and used as a training base. Preventive social action in the form of wider educational and cultural factors must take precedence over improved correctional services. Five references are proviced.