Abstract
Offenders’ motivations to undertake rehabilitative programmes are underexplored. Drawing upon semi-ethnographic research, this article considers the reasons why prisoners apply to join a democratic therapeutic community. It identifies a typology of motivation to participate, and determines that most applicants are seeking an alternative to the rehabilitative hegemony of structured, manualized, cognitive-behavioural interventions. The findings have important implications for correctional staff, and in particular, offender managers, who are best placed to identify and encourage suitable offenders to apply for admission.
Introduction
For three decades, researchers have toiled to establish ‘what works’ to reduce or eliminate re-offending and in which optimal conditions (Andrews and Bonta, 1994; McGuire, 1995, 2002). Forty three offending behaviour programmes (OBPs), informed by this research, have been accredited for use in the probation and prison services of England and Wales (Ministry of Justice, 2010); and static risk algorithms, technical assessment tools, and an extensive literature guide for correctional staff have been introduced in efforts to gauge offenders’ motivation, suitability, and treatment readiness for specific OBPs (inter alia, McMurran, 2002; Ward et al., 2004).
Yet, for all this research activity, the motivation – or modifiable, interactional ‘moving force’ – of the serious offender to enter into and continue with an OBP (Drieschner et al., 2004; López-Viets et al., 2002) has been overlooked. The assumption appears to be that either offenders do want to ‘reform’, and if not, should, and can be ‘helped’ to, want to ‘reform’ − most obviously, through the techniques of motivational interviewing (Miller and Rollnick, 1991) and awareness of the stages of behavioural change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1984) − or more instrumentally, must ‘reform’ by ‘doing courses’, if they hope to be released early from a significant but determinate (time-limited) sentence or at all from an indeterminate (life) sentence. Rarely have offenders themselves been asked why they agreed to participate in a specific rehabilitative intervention, with most scholars more interested in the effect or importance of motivation on completion and treatment outcomes (for example, Gideon, 2010; McMurran and McCulloch, 2007; Terry and Mitchell, 2001; cf. Hudson, 2005).
This article accordingly engages with the neglected issue of prisoner motivation by presenting a qualitative case study of offender-initiated applications to one particular – and distinctly ‘different’ – rehabilitative programme: the prison-based democratic therapeutic community (TC). It begins with a necessarily brief description of offending behaviour programmes, the TC alternative, and the research project on which this article is based. A typology of motivation is then presented which reveals very variable degrees of commitment to the TC at the time of application for admission, but an almost uniform dissatisfaction with the ‘standard’, ‘normal’ (cognitive-behavioural) OBPs which now monopolize correctional rehabilitation in ‘mainstream’ (‘system’) prisons. The implications of these findings are then explored.
Offending behaviour programmes and the TC model
Central to contemporary approaches to offender rehabilitation is the provision of structured, cognitive-behavioural programmes, in the community or in custody, intended to help individuals recognize and overcome the factors and tendencies which contribute to their offending. These programmes, which may target general criminal behaviour, substance misuse, or violent or sexually violent offending, assume that thoughts affect behaviour (hence cognitive-behavioural, to denote the theoretical synthesis of these traditions) and that rational individuals have the capability to monitor and modify their thoughts and behaviours. Offenders, generally working in groups of eight to twelve and facilitated by specially trained staff, complete a schedule of treatment modules or ‘blocks’ over a specified number of sessions or weeks, which systematically seek to replace rigid, dysfunctional thinking errors and problematic attitudes, with creative, abstract, and consequential thinking, interpersonal problem-solving skills, and social perspective-taking. Offenders completed over 31,000 1 of these programmes during the reporting year 2010−11, across every probation region and almost all prison categories in England and Wales (Ministry of Justice, 2011).
Included within the list of accredited OBPs, however, is the democratic 2 therapeutic community (HM Prison Service, 2003). This treatment method is currently available in just four men’s medium secure prisons: Blundeston, Dovegate, Gartree and Grendon, and one women’s closed prison, Send, all in England. Whilst Grendon remains the only establishment to operate entirely and exclusively as a TC, the other four prisons provide a therapeutic community ‘unit’ within, but physically and to varying degrees, operationally, distinct from, the host establishment. Together, these TCs can accommodate up to 498 men and 40 women prisoners – approximately 0.6 per cent of the Anglo-Welsh prison population – most of whom will be serving substantial sentences for serious offences against the person. (Indeed, Gartree TC – known to its members as GTC – only recruits from this prison’s indeterminate sentenced population.)
In contrast to most ‘standard’ OBPs’ preoccupation with the cognitions and behaviours of the offender as a rational actor, TC treatment asserts that an understanding of the historical causes of offending – often to be found in ‘hidden’ (unconscious) emotional meanings, motivations, and fears, dating back to early traumatic experiences – is vital if the symptoms the problems give rise to – offending and other anti-social and dysfunctional behaviours – are to be treated effectively. This is achieved through the TC version of group-work: thrice-weekly ‘slow, open’ psychotherapy groups of up to eight offenders – or, in the language of TCs, residents – and one or more trained facilitator, in which, in a largely unstructured and non-directive manner, residents relate their entire life histories, and attempt to discern connections between their problematic past experiences and ongoing dysfunctional behaviours. These small groups are complemented by bi-weekly community meetings, in which all members meet to discuss and debate issues affecting the effective functioning of the community, and by residents’ involvement in a range of community activities which are intended to increase their self-esteem and self-efficacy.
The research
This article draws upon semi-ethnographic, exploratory research undertaken by the author in 2006 and 2007 at the TCs at Grendon, Gartree, and Send. Much of the previous research on prison-based TCs has focused upon evaluating whether they ‘work’ to reduce re-offending or improve psychological functioning (Marshall, 1997; Newton, 1998; Shuker and Newton, 2008; Taylor, 2000), or their practice and management (Cullen et al., 1997; Morris, 2004; Parker, 2007). Little attention has been paid to the culture of TCs (cf. Genders and Player, 1995) and specifically, the perspectives and experiences of serving residents (cf. Smartt, 2001). This research sought to rectify this omission by producing a sociological and phenomenological account of ‘the TC way’ of offender rehabilitation and imprisonment (Stevens, 2012). Prolonged observation of the regime (including community meetings and, whenever possible, evening association, though excluding small groups) was combined with in-depth semi-structured interviews. Sixty residents and 20 disciplinary, clinical, and managerial staff volunteered to be interviewed, the majority of whom, given its much greater size, resided or worked at Grendon. Of the combined resident sample, 55 per cent were serving an indeterminate sentence, and most had been convicted of one or more offences of violence (58 per cent), robbery (17 per cent), or sexual assault (15 per cent). Interviews were recorded with participants’ consent and fully transcribed; illustrative verbatim quotes from which appear in this article, with interviewees’ pseudonymous name and TC location. The resulting data was coded and analyzed according to the principles of liberal grounded theory, with key themes and findings identified and developed inductively.
A typology of motivation
A striking characteristic of prison-based TCs is that all residents are volunteers: they must apply for admission and be (continually) assessed as suitable for the rigours of therapy and the TC way. Entrants cannot therefore be administratively allocated to a TC prison according to their security classification, or to the TC programme according to their risk of reconviction, as is the usual practice. The only prisoners who are automatically disbarred from entry are those who are assessed as requiring the highest security conditions; have insufficient time left to serve to complete a meaningful ‘dosage’ of therapy (not less than 18 months); deny their offence or are pursuing an appeal against conviction; are presently using (and admit to using) recreational drugs or are reliant upon prescribed psychotropic (mood-altering) medication; or are at risk of self-harm or suicide.
That the would-be resident must initiate his or her application for admission suggests of itself some motivation, though whether this is genuinely to change, or for other hazily defined or less noble aims, is for TC staff to ascertain. My interest was in understanding why resident interviewees had applied for what is, after all, a still rarely chosen alternative method of rehabilitation. From these 60 responses, a typology of participants’ motivation was created which revealed four distinct categories of applicants: enthusiasts, followers, desperados, and escapees. These are presented here as the primary motivation cited by interviewees, though in some instances a degree of overlap between categories was discernible. Although the sample size was modest, there is no reason to assume that this typology would not apply to other entrants to other TCs, and possibly, to prisoners’ motivations for mainstream OBPs.
Type one: Enthusiasts
It wasn’t a difficult decision to come here because I wanted that change. I wanted to be a different person. (Danny, Grendon)
Exactly half the combined sample sought TC treatment in order to understand better themselves, their index offence(s), and criminal career, and to make the necessary internal changes to improve their potential for long-term desistance from crime. These self-aware and agentic enthusiasts had realized that they needed and wanted to change. They had long been unhappy with themselves and consciously wanted to explore the reasons behind their offending. They had pro-actively instigated and persistently pursued their application – with or without the approval and assistance of correctional staff – and so had made it their personal priority to address the aching discrepancy between how, and who, they were and wanted to become. Crucially, however, they were also aware that the changes they wanted to institute would be unachievable without professional help, and considered that such help would not be as forthcoming or as palatable from ‘standard’ OBPs:
I was struggling with my prison sentence and with actually understanding myself. Some things weren’t clear for me, what I done, and with knowing who I am, and wanting to be someone better. And the TC seemed like the best opportunity to find out and to grow and become more self-confident. (Theresa, Send) From a personal perspective, it was about wanting to know myself a lot better and understand my reasons for committing crime. And then, from a prisoner perspective, every lifer has to do one big course and it was here or the CSCP
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… [which] seemed a very rigid course, very plotted, and I don’t really get on too well with that kind of thing … [so] I preferred here. (Ross, GTC) I’d done some standard courses like ETS,
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but basically, they just made me aware of what I was doing but I didn’t get no empathy from them. They’re false. I was telling them what they want to hear to get parole but as soon as I left the room, I was talking to my mates about doing drug deals and what I’m going to do when I get out … But with this, I liked the way you’re living in the environment every day; that it’s real … I realized how much of a twat I’d been. I’ve been released three times. I mean, I’m nearly 30, I’m getting old! I wanted to do something proper. (Stewart, Grendon) A lot of the staff were very negative about TCs … My probation officer said she wouldn’t recommend me because ‘you haven’t got psychiatric issues’. I told her TCs aren’t about that but she wouldn’t listen … She got quite arsey with me, wouldn’t support me, and wouldn’t accept that she might be ignorant. I spoke to the lifer manager and she said I needed drug issues … But I kept pushing and pushing … I deferred my PED
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to get here which is a huge thing for a lifer … It was such a battle, of strength and determination, to get here and I had to fight that alone … for something that I believed was right for me. And I hadn’t let [the prison], the probation officer, and the lifer manager, stop me. People who have failed at a process are going to have negative views of it, and they are the people you tend to meet in the system, especially in B cats;
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that’s why they’ve gone back there. So they didn’t put me off. You find that most of the people who are negative about Grendon either have never been here or got kicked out! (Michael, Grendon)
Type two: Followers
[The ex-Grendon resident] told me about the TC vibe, what happens in therapy … And he said, ‘Forget what all the fucking idiots here say, if you want to look for something, that’s the place to go’. (Chris, Grendon)
Almost one fifth of interviewees, all male, were followers. This second category of applicant met many of the same criteria as enthusiasts: they enjoyed problem recognition and were expectant of positive treatment outcomes. Their decision to apply, however, was extrinsically motivated, originating from the recommendation of either a former resident – TC followers – or a criminal justice system professional – CJS followers, to which they were receptive. In marked contrast to the disparagement of TCs as refuges for ‘wrong ‘uns’ described above, TC followers, who all resided at Grendon, were encouraged to apply by men who had not completed their therapy but who nevertheless stressed that their ‘failure’ should not deter others: ‘[The ex-resident] said it was too much for him at the time, but he’d still got tons out of it – was more tolerant, less violent … [and] he would recommend it for real rehabilitation’ (Andrew, Grendon). Moreover, the opportunity to learn from the first-hand experiences of these Grendon evangelizers had enabled TC followers to make a uniquely well-informed choice: they were far better prepared than other applicants for the reality and ‘culture shock’ of the TC way (see further: Stevens, 2012).
CJS followers, meanwhile, accepted the recommendation, usually from an influential pre-sentence report writer such as a probation officer or forensic psychiatrist, that TC treatment ‘would be beneficial, to address my issues’ (Ben, GTC). Notably, three of the seven Gartree participants in this research fell into this category; men who seemed genuinely eager to act upon advice they respected and believed would help them to explore their offending and ‘deal with emotional problems … grief and guilt’ (Raymond, GTC), whilst still in the early stages of an indeterminate sentence. Although there clearly are instrumental incentives for savvy prisoners, desirous of efficient sentence progression, to engage with recommended risk-reducing interventions sooner rather than later, these men appeared to be motivated more by their need for palliative self-awareness, than calculated self-advancement.
Type three: Desperados
It was either this, or a lifetime inside. (Winston, Grendon)
The most criminologically interesting of the typologies, and accounting for nearly a third of the sample, desperados, as their name suggests, were plainly distinguishable by their affective state and limited expectations, of themselves and the TC, at the time of application. These residents were most likely to voice disquiet about TCs’ ‘nonces and grasses’ reputation, but reasoned that ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ (Charles, Grendon), since they had either ‘tried everything else’, or else reached out to the TC from a position of personal crisis. The former subcategory, last resort desperados, appeared particularly troubled by their recidivism which – amongst all those in this category at Grendon – had resulted in them spending most of their adult life in prison. These applicants had, over time, come to the conclusion that if they did not prioritize doing ‘something’ to change, they would spend their ‘lifetime’ in prison, either on their present indeterminate sentence or through the life sentence by instalments that a succession of lengthy determinate sentences can represent. The demoralization and bewilderment they experienced because of their seeming inability to ‘go straight’, and, for many, their increasing dissatisfaction with themselves and their hedonistic, ‘futile’ lives, had therefore led them ‘to at least try something different’ in the ‘last chance saloon’ (Brian, Grendon) of the TC. The ‘leap of faith’ this required was often remarkable, and poignant, given that these desperados had – in their self-assessment – ‘fucked up’ all previous attempts at rehabilitation, were unaware or unconvinced of the potential merits of TC treatment, and had minimal confidence in themselves to change:
I done loads of courses; psychology love me! Makes no difference, though. Last time, I went out fully intending to go straight – hand on heart, Alisa, I did, but – it’s circumstances, ain’t it? [laughs]
Is it? That sounds like it had nothing to do with you …
Yeah, minimization! But in a way, it weren’t really. I mean, I got out, my mates come round with some puff,
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I started selling drugs again, got a new motor, some guns, started running around again like a fucking idiot, and boom! Nicked!
So is this time likely to be any different, if you complete your therapy?
I don’t know. I’d like to think so. Worth a try, ain’t it? (Nick, Grendon) Half of me wanted to change but half of me was quite comfortable where I was. It gets a bit monotonous, going in and out of prison, but I didn’t mind it, really … But I suppose deep down, I knew it wasn’t right … [and] I thought if I come here, maybe I’d find the motivation to change my ways.
Why did you think you might find that motivation here, when you hadn’t found it elsewhere?
Because it’s so different here. I didn’t know much about it – but I knew it was different! Put it this way, nothing had worked up to then, so perhaps I needed to try something completely different. And if it didn’t work, I was nothing lost, was I? It was that kind of attitude. (Nate, Grendon) There’s more opportunity for the real me to be seen here – not the person in the file, but the one I am now. The problem in the system is being bunched up like a statistic, with a lot of other people, and your individuality goes. (Muktar, Grendon) I think the final straw was I thought there was someone who was looking at me as if I wasn’t there, and I thought, you cheeky fucker, I’ll plunge him up a few times and that will teach him to mug me off. So one day I saw him go in to the kitchens by himself and I got me tool
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and went to do him, and he turned round and asked me if I wanted a sandwich, real friendly like, and I realized then, it was me, it wasn’t him. That was the point I thought to myself, I need to change; I can’t live my life like this no more. I nearly stabbed someone up because of my paranoia. I felt like I was starting to lose my mind and needed to do something about myself before I got into some serious bother.
And that was on this sentence, for murder?
Yes. This was about five years in, at [a high security prison].
So didn’t this sentence already count as ‘serious bother’?
No, not really, because the way I was thinking then, [the victim] fucking deserved it and getting life, well, I know it sounds mad but I know how to do prison, you know what I mean? So even then, I didn’t really think I had any problems. It was only because of this geezer that I thought, I need to get a grip. I was getting into too much trouble. I was not happy … [and] was heavily involved in drugs at my last nick – supply, distribution – and people were getting stabbed up; it was a bit chaotic. I [was] down the block
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and my family was beginning to ask some serious questions about me.
So did you come here mainly for you, or for them?
For them; they badgered me into it. I thought it sounded a bit crap, but they wanted me to try it and I thought, it’s the least I can do.
Type four: Escapees
I thought that you all cuddle and things like that! That you sat around all day chatting and didn’t have to do any work! Course, I soon found out it weren’t like that at all! [laughs] (Caroline, Send)
Just two female residents comprised the last category, self-confessed Escapees from the system. Clearly, this number is too small to allow one to generalize, yet these residents demand their own category as their motivation was quite distinct. These women, who had both previously served a number of short custodial sentences, candidly admitted that they were motivated solely by a desire to enliven the spectacular banality of prison life and evade the ‘hassle’ of the mainstream. Although neither had been ‘picked on’ or had otherwise struggled to adapt to and survive in prison, they disliked or were ‘bored by’ the prison in which they were living at the time of their application and imagined that a therapeutic prison ‘sounded like it would be nicer; an easier time’ (Josephine, Send). The irony of the ‘harder time’ that awaited them within the ‘emotionally exhausting’ TC was therefore not lost upon them. Whilst men, then, might be thought to have greater reason to wish to flee the casual violence and hypermasculine aggression endemic to their penal environment, none of the male interviewees alluded to an attraction to the TC because of the potential escape route it offers; nor suggested that they had been enticed to the TC in anticipation that it might offer an ‘easier’ way to serve some of their sentence or a ‘cushier’ prison experience. Residents of both sexes, however, frequently attributed these motivations to peers whose commitment to therapy they found lacking.
The TC alternative
Two further themes emerged from this typology and my related discussions with interviewees. Firstly, a significant attraction of the TC regime to most applicants was that it is ‘different’ to the now enshrined default setting of offender rehabilitation, the cognitive-behavioural OBP, of which they were highly critical. Secondly, participants complained that TC treatment remains widely misunderstood by mainstream prisoners and correctional staff, with the result that people who might benefit from TC residency fail to apply. I consider these points in turn.
Not a ‘normal’ offending behaviour programme
The desire to try a method of rehabilitation which was not a ‘normal’ cognitive-behavioural intervention was common to enthusiasts, followers, and desperados. It is perhaps unsurprising that these residents – now engrossed in the unstructured, emotional, psychodynamic exploration of their life histories, including but not confined to their offending – were so universally dissatisfied with what they perceived as the tightly focused, time-limited, manual-compliant, ‘tick box’ approach of cognitive-behavioural programmes. They were, after all, people who had, for various reasons, elected ‘to look for something’ beyond the ‘standard’ rehabilitative offering, and their dismissal of ‘standard’ OBPs may not therefore be representative of all ‘standard’ prisoners − though see Crewe’s (2009) account of mainstream prisoners’ critical perceptions of cognitive-behavioural OBPs.
The strength and uniformity of TC residents’ dislike and derision of these OBPs, however, was startling. Interviewees’ criticisms ranged from humorous incredulity at the National Offender Management Service’s (NOMS) financial and ideological investment in programmes which, they argued, were erroneously founded upon ‘simplistic’ assumptions about offenders’ alleged thinking errors and anti-social attitudes; to bald repudiations of the worth of programmes in which, by apparently offering the obviously correct, socially acceptable responses to questions and scenarios, one was deemed to have ‘addressed one’s offending behaviour’; to concerned complaints that ‘standard’ OBPs offered no meaningful insight into crime and criminality or were simply irrelevant to, and unrealistic about, prisoners’ quotidian battle to endure their criminogenic environment:
I do not know how [NOMS] can believe that them things do any good, that it’s worth the money they put into it. They must be trippin’! [laughs] … They think like, we don’t know right from wrong, or don’t think, can’t think, right! It’s a waste. (Francis, GTC) Those courses have absolutely no credibility with inmates. People just do them because they have to … and all you have to do is sit there and tell [staff] what they want to hear. (Steve, GTC) You can do them courses a hundred times over but you’ll not get to the root of your problems … Anger management, to be truthful, left me more angrier. I thought a lot of it was like, talking down to you; it just wound me up! [laughs] They don’t sit and explain things to you in-depth, why you get angry, like the therapist does … Psychologists think them courses are great and I really wonder why! (Louise, Send) ETS – totally unrealistic. Nice idea and everything but as soon as you walk out the classroom, you’re back into a very hostile environment. Like you’re supposed to use ‘I’ statements: ‘This is how I feel when you do this’. You try saying that to someone in the system and they’ll tell you to fuck off! Probably stick one on you! (Clive, Grendon)
This lukewarm endorsement was further compromised by interviewees’ distinction between the counterproductive consignment of ‘learning outcomes’ to the educational exile of the OBP classroom, and the microscopic analysis of the therapeutic community, where ‘therapy doesn’t stop when the group ends’ and efforts to change are ‘full-on, 24/7’ (Nigel, Grendon). Residents thus repeatedly remarked upon the ease with which one could ‘talk the talk’ in the ‘frontstage’ arena of OBP sessions, but revert to criminogenic attitudes in the ‘backstage’ residential areas (Goffman, 1959). In particular, male residents noted their peers’ tendency to ‘say all the right things’ in the classroom, but ‘be extremely derogatory about their offences’ (Peter, Grendon) upon return to the ‘laddish’ environment of a men’s prison wing, where hypermasculine, anti-authoritarian, crime-glorifying, risk-taking tales of criminal derring-do are deemed more appropriate. This ability to present ‘one face in public and another in private’ (Raymond, GTC), however, was impossible within the well functioning TC, where peers therapeutically ‘feedback’ on one another:
You can say any old shit in them classes … [But] if I’m going to sit in my [therapy] group and spout shit, I can’t then go on the landings and say the exact opposite, ‘I’m blagging them’, because the next day, it will be put on me. So if you’re going to hold up a false front and blag, then you’ve got to blag every day for three years, so you’ve got to be really good at it and have a really good memory! (Stewart, Grendon) I did the SOTP at [a prison reserved for sexual offenders] but even there, you’d do it and then you come back on the wing and that was it, it’s not spoken about; you leave it behind. It’s like that is your therapy and this is your prison and never the twain shall meet. But here, the two go hand in hand; your therapy and how you socialise and what you talk about. So the rehabilitation here is all the time, so it feels much more genuine and closer to what you’ll need for life outside. (Leslie, Grendon)
Misunderstood and underused
With the exception of followers, it was evident that most residents had, at the time of their application, very little accurate understanding of or meaningful knowledge about what TC treatment involves. Even enthusiasts had generally gleaned only minimal information about the regime prior to application, chiefly through the verbal ‘prison grapevine’, though a few cited publications such as The Prisons Handbook or prison newspapers.
Both residents and TC staff therefore opined that considerably more information about the TC option was needed, both to counteract the damaging (‘nonces and grasses’, ‘psychiatric issues’) misrepresentation of its regime in the system, and to alert the ‘right sort’ of prisoner to its possibilities. In particular, staff emphasized the need for their mainstream colleagues with the requisite authority – pre-sentence report writers, offender managers and supervisors, forensic psychologists, personal (prison) officers – to identify prisoners who might benefit from the TC and encourage them to apply, and lamented the lack of a national strategy to guide suitable referrals − the continuing ‘pressing need’ for which was remarked upon by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (2009:6). Given that an Institute of Psychiatry study estimated that eight per cent of women prisoners and five per cent of men prisoners would profit from TC treatment (Gunn et al., 1991; Maden et al., 1994), there should be, but at present are not, long waiting lists for the meagre 538 spaces available in England’s five prison-based TCs.
The willingness of CJS followers in this sample to heed professional advice, however, suggests that there exists an untapped market of potential applicants who would be amenable to TC treatment, if influential staff were more alert to, and cognizant of, what the TC does and whom it best suits: self-aware, mature, articulate, long-term prisoners who suspect something ‘deeper’ has prompted their problems, who want or accept that they need to change, and who, quite possibly, have already ‘successfully’ completed ‘standard’ OBPs but for whom change remains elusive. The prospect that this knowledge gap is creating a referral chasm may explain why no one amongst my Send interviewees was recommended for TC treatment – indeed, two women were advised not to apply – whilst Jenny, as previously related, encountered sustained resistance.
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Recruitment to TCs could therefore increase if well informed professionals helped to nurture TC enthusiasts, create CJS followers, and direct towards the TC those prisoners who are sufficiently desperate to ‘try anything’. As this therapist argued:
[Applicants] must be volunteers but the difficulty is, if it’s not put down as a possibility on OASys
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or a sentence plan, [prisoners] may not think of it. So I’d like to see it flagged up a lot more on sentence plans. Let them be assessed for a TC, for us to meet the person and talk about it, and then they at least get a chance to think about joining a TC.
Conclusion
A considerable accumulation of international theoretical and empirical research suggests that well designed, appropriately targeted, and skilfully delivered cognitive-behavioural interventions can change the way offenders think and behave. The motivation of people to participate in a particular OBP, however, remains under researched. Drawing from original research conducted in three prison-based TCs, this article has explored the various reasons given by prisoners who applied for entry to a TC. These applicants were not, as is sometimes assumed, uniformly highly motivated, self-selecting individuals who want the TC’s distinctive regime to ‘work’ for them because they already believe the regime can ‘work’. Whilst some candidates were very enthusiastic about or demonstrated well informed confidence in the TC, others were unconvinced of its likely merits and displayed questionable treatment readiness. Enthusiasts, followers, and desperados were united, however, by their decision to marry their desire for change to the atypical TC method. As architects of their own rehabilitation and personal development, and prompted by their generally poor opinion of ‘standard’ interventions, they rejected NOMS’s reliance upon cognitive-behavioural OBPs as, to borrow from Mathiesen (2006: 142−143), the ‘action function’ by which the government appears to be ‘doing something’ to ‘reform’ offenders. Instead, aspiring TC residents agentically determined to seek out a ‘different’ penal environment and rehabilitative method which they hoped, though in some cases could scarcely believe, might help them to change, would be superior to their mainstream options, and would allow them to contribute more proactively to the reiterative appraisal of their ‘risk’.
The introspection and distressing disclosures of therapy, and the relentless scrutiny of the community and its strategic reversal of many aspects of prison culture (Rhodes, 2010), will not appeal to many, probably most, ‘hard cons’. For those who, however, whether from desire or desperation seek to change, and want to ‘deal with emotions, not just how you think about things’ (Andrew, Grendon), the TC may be a viable option. Greater awareness of the TC alternative within the penal estate, and in particular, the routine consideration by offender managers working with long-term prisoners of the latter’s possible suitability for TC treatment, would therefore enable more people to benefit from the potential, and peculiarities, of prison-based therapeutic communities.