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Treatment Retention: A Theory of Post-Release Supervision for the Substance Abusing Offender

NCJ Number
208959
Journal
Federal Probation Volume: 68 Issue: 3 Dated: December 2004 Pages: 24-29
Author(s)
Benjamin Steiner
Date Published
December 2004
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article presents a theory for effectively supervising substance-abusing offenders released to community supervision schemes.
Abstract
As State budgets continue to dwindle and prison populations continue to climb, more and more offenders are being released to their communities under some form of community supervision. While the vast majority of those released are not violent offenders, over one-third of offenders released to community supervision programs have drug and alcohol problems. Little guidance has been provided to parole and probation officers on how to effectively manage different offender groups. The current paper proposes a theory for supervising substance-abusing offenders that brings together the supervision and treatment components of community supervision; the theory is termed the “treatment retention” theory of supervision. Previous evidence suggests that the most effective way of treating and reducing the recidivism rates of substance-abusing offenders is to offer an in-prison therapeutic community (TC) followed by intensive, cognitively-based aftercare treatment. Effective supervision is crucial to the model because many offenders are coerced into treatment rather than choosing treatment because of a desire to change. Evidence suggests that intensive supervision models can be effectively paired with TC-type treatment models to produce long-term changes in offenders, even if they were coerced into treatment. Aftercare programs should follow the relapse prevention model as aftercare personnel work with the offender to identify relapse-triggering situations and develop strategies to work through them. Reliable drug testing should also be incorporated into aftercare programs, as should other types of services such as job readiness programs and housing programs. Table, references