Evolution and Accountability: Ten Years of Groups in a Day Centre for Offenders (From Groupwork With Offenders, P 110-117, 1993, Allan Brown and Brian Caddick, eds. - See NCJ-158762)

• NCJ Number: 158772
• Author(s): J Earnshaw
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 8 pages
• Sale Source: Whiting and Birch
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

The Alternative Probation Project Day Center in England has used a modified therapeutic community model since its inception and offers a combination of group and individual work.

Abstract

The program also emphasizes and teaches constructive leisure pursuits, fosters teamwork and cooperation within the group, and undertakes service work within the local community. The center focuses on providing resocialization to people whose group participation is a result of pressures from the court and society. It now has a consciousness of working within the probation service and adhering to agency standards. The group counseling encourages the thinking and reasoning adult, spending time examining in detail the thinking processes through which offenses are devised and justified and in exposing the errors and gaps in this thinking. The activities program requires adult, cooperative behavior and teamwork. The offender group also works twice a week with people with moderate and severe learning difficulties, teaching them physical skills. Although it is unclear how much the center changes offenders' lives, the current program appears to have more quanitifiable success than the previous one.