Therapeutic Community Treatment Program

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

With funds secured from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and prevention, the Baltimore County Department of Corrections opened a Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) housing unit in January of 2006, for male inmates with one year remaining on their sentences. The program, a modified therapeutic community (TC), consists of a drug-free residential setting that uses a hierarchical model with treatment stages that reflect increased levels of personal and social responsibility. This TC differs from other treatment approaches principally in its use of the “community,” which consists of treatment staff and those inmates in recovery, as key agents of change, allowing inmates to interact in structures and unstructured ways to influence attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors associated with substance abuse. Services include individual and group therapy, recreational therapy, cognitive behavioral training, relapse prevention, criminal thinking, aftercare planning and referral to community resources. In addition, inmates have access to other department programs. A unique component of this program, a trauma group known as “The Regulators,” has proven to be an important piece to recovery in that men have a different definition of trauma and do not readily identify themselves as victims nor understand how it impedes recovery.