Therapeutic Community is One Tool, Not the Toolbox: Rethinking Correctional Education in Philippine Criminology

In Philippine criminological education, the Therapeutic Community (TC) has occupied a prominent place in the teaching of corrections. Criminology students are expected to familiarize themselves with its philosophy, mechanisms, terminology, and group dynamics. It is understandable why this happened. Therapeutic Community programs have become deeply embedded in Philippine correctional practice, particularly in jails, prisons, and community corrections. A criminology graduate entering the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Bureau of Corrections, or Parole and Probation Administration will therefore likely encounter some version of the Therapeutic Community modality.

There is nothing inherently wrong with teaching Therapeutic Community. In fact, there is considerable evidence that properly designed and implemented therapeutic communities can work. Research has found particularly encouraging results when TCs are used for people with substance-use problems in correctional settings. Mitchell, Wilson, and MacKenzie (2007), in a meta-analytic review of incarceration-based drug treatment, found therapeutic communities among the more promising approaches for reducing subsequent offending. Research also suggests that the social environment created by therapeutic communities—the emphasis on belonging, mutual responsibility, behavioral change, and personal agency—can contribute to positive outcomes (Pearce & Pickard, 2013).

The problem, therefore, is not Therapeutic Community itself.

The problem begins when Therapeutic Community becomes the answer to almost everything.

In Philippine correctional practice, TC has often functioned as a standard rehabilitation framework applied across very different correctional populations. The accused awaiting trial may encounter it in jail. The convicted PDL may encounter it in prison. The probationer or parolee may encounter similar programming in the community. Yet these individuals are fundamentally different. They have different legal statuses, different offense histories, different levels of risk, different criminogenic needs, different strengths, and different reasons for becoming involved with the criminal justice system.

A first-time, low-risk offender is different from a person with a long history of offending. A person whose primary problem is drug dependency is different from someone whose principal criminogenic need involves antisocial companions, criminal thinking, unemployment, or dysfunctional family relationships. A person charged with an offense is also legally different from a person already convicted of one. Treating all of them with essentially the same intervention may be administratively convenient, but convenience is not the same thing as effective correctional management.

This is where decades of correctional research should challenge the way we teach criminology in the Philippines.

From one size fits all to Risk-Need-Responsivity

One of the most influential developments in modern correctional rehabilitation is the Risk-Need-Responsivity model developed by Andrews, Bonta, Hoge, and their colleagues. Its basic proposition is remarkably straightforward. The risk principle says that the intensity of correctional intervention should correspond to the person’s risk of reoffending. The need principle says that intervention should address criminogenic needs—dynamic factors actually associated with offending. The responsivity principle says that interventions should be delivered in ways that match the person’s abilities, motivation, learning style, strengths, and other relevant characteristics (Andrews, Bonta, & Hoge, 1990; Bonta & Andrews, 2007).

These principles fundamentally change the question that correctional personnel should ask.

The question should not simply be: What rehabilitation program do we have?

The better questions are: Who is this person? What is this person’s level of risk? What factors are driving the offending behavior? What intervention is most appropriate for those needs? How intensive should that intervention be? And how will we determine whether it worked?

That is the essence of effective correctional management.

The distinction is especially important for low-risk individuals. Correctional officials sometimes assume that if a program is beneficial, giving more of it must be even better. Research suggests otherwise. Intensive interventions directed toward low-risk individuals can consume scarce resources without producing corresponding benefits and, under some circumstances, may actually produce worse outcomes. Lowenkamp, Latessa, and Holsinger’s examination of 13,676 individuals across 97 correctional programs demonstrated the practical importance of matching intervention intensity to risk. The broader RNR literature similarly finds that correctional treatment becomes more effective as programs adhere more closely to the principles of risk, need, and responsivity (Andrews & Dowden, 2006; Bonta & Andrews, 2007).

There are several possible reasons. Placing low-risk people into unnecessarily intensive programs can disrupt employment, education, family relationships, and other protective factors. It can also increase their exposure to higher-risk peers. We should therefore stop assuming that more treatment necessarily means better treatment.

Sometimes the best intervention is a less intensive intervention.

Risk assessment must come before program assignment

This principle is directly related to something I have repeatedly emphasized in discussing correctional reform in the Philippines: assessment must precede intervention.

We cannot intelligently prescribe a correctional program without first understanding the person receiving it. Modern risk-and-needs assessment does more than classify individuals as low, medium, or high risk. Proper assessment identifies dynamic criminogenic needs that can become targets for case planning. These may include antisocial attitudes, antisocial companions, substance abuse, family or marital problems, difficulties in school or employment, and lack of prosocial recreational activities (Bonta & Andrews, 2007).

This is precisely why the development of risk assessment instruments in Philippine corrections is important. Risk assessment should not become another form that officers complete and place inside a folder. The assessment must drive the case management plan.

Assessment should determine classification. Classification should determine intervention. Intervention should address criminogenic needs. Progress should lead to reassessment. Reassessment should guide the next case-management decision.

That is a correctional system.

Without those connections, we merely have activities.

Therapeutic community is one tool, not the tool box

Therapeutic Community should therefore remain in criminology education, but students should understand it for what it is: one correctional intervention among many possible interventions.

For a person with significant substance-use problems who is assessed as needing an intensive, highly structured intervention, a properly implemented therapeutic community may be appropriate. For another person, however, a cognitive-behavioral intervention targeting criminal thinking may be more appropriate. Someone else may primarily require substance-use treatment, employment assistance, family intervention, anger management, educational programming, or structured community supervision.

There is strong empirical support for cognitive-behavioral approaches in corrections. Landenberger and Lipsey’s (2005) meta-analysis found that cognitive-behavioral programs were associated with reductions in recidivism, with effectiveness influenced by such factors as implementation quality and characteristics of participants. Their findings reinforce an important point: the name of the program matters less than whether the program addresses the right problem, for the right person, at the right intensity, and is implemented properly.

Thinking for a Change is one example. It integrates cognitive restructuring, social skills development, and problem-solving. A real-world evaluation by Lowenkamp, Hubbard, Makarios, and Latessa (2009) found lower recidivism among participants under appropriate implementation conditions. Other cognitive-behavioral interventions, including Moral Reconation Therapy and Reasoning and Rehabilitation, illustrate the wider menu of approaches that correctional students should at least understand.

This does not mean that every criminology school must teach every branded correctional program. That would merely replace one problem with another.

Students should instead learn how to determine which intervention is appropriate and which are not.

What criminology schools should be teaching

This is where Philippine criminology education needs serious updating.

If an entire correctional rehabilitation curriculum revolves primarily around Therapeutic Community, students can easily graduate believing that rehabilitation means TC. They enter the BJMP, BuCor, PPA, provincial jails, or other justice institutions carrying that understanding. Eventually, some become jail officers, correctional officers, probation and parole officers, administrators, trainers, and policymakers. What they learned in criminology school becomes what correctional agencies reproduce.

The consequence is predictable.

One modality becomes institutionalized. Institutionalization becomes policy. Policy becomes routine. Routine becomes mandatory. And eventually nobody asks whether the intervention still fits the individual.

The principles of effective correctional intervention tell us that program integrity also matters. Andrews and Dowden (2005) found through meta-analysis that correctional programs with stronger organizational and treatment integrity produced better outcomes. Effective corrections therefore requires much more than possessing a rehabilitation manual. Agencies need properly selected and trained staff, appropriate assessment procedures, competent supervision, quality assurance, monitoring, evaluation, and organizational support.

These are precisely the competencies that criminology students should be learning.

A modern corrections course should therefore begin with theories of rehabilitation and behavioral change. It should teach structured risk and needs assessment, classification, case planning, the Risk-Need-Responsivity principles, criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs, cognitive-behavioral interventions, substance-use interventions, therapeutic communities, community-based treatment, reentry, desistance, program implementation, fidelity, outcome evaluation, and ethical correctional practice.

Therapeutic Community should be inside that curriculum.

It should not be the curriculum.

Changing the board examination

This also means reconsidering the Table of Specifications and eventually the questions appearing in the Criminologists Licensure Examination.

If board examinations heavily emphasize the terminology, philosophy, hierarchy, activities, and mechanisms of Therapeutic Community, criminology schools will naturally teach toward those questions. Professors will lecture about TC because students need to pass the board examination. Review centers will memorize TC concepts because those concepts appear in the examination. The examination therefore does not merely measure criminology education. It shapes criminology education.

The board examination should increasingly test whether future criminologists can apply the principles of effective corrections.

Give students a case. Provide information about criminal history, substance use, employment, family relationships, antisocial companions, criminal thinking, education, and other relevant factors. Ask them to determine the appropriate level of intervention. Ask them which criminogenic needs should be prioritized. Ask them why placing a low-risk individual in an intensive intervention might be counterproductive. Ask them to distinguish risk factors from needs, needs from responsivity factors, and programs from outcomes.

Those are questions that measure correctional competence.

Memorizing the terminology of a single rehabilitation modality does not.

Philippine criminology must catch up

Finally, criminology schools themselves must invest in their faculty.

Professors teaching corrections should be exposed to contemporary correctional research and evidence-based practices. Universities should encourage faculty members to undertake international training, research collaborations, exchanges, and continuing professional development. But we should not simply import foreign correctional programs wholesale. International evidence must be tested, adapted, and evaluated according to Filipino realities, Filipino institutions, Filipino families, Filipino correctional personnel, and Filipino clients.

That is where Philippine correctional research must grow.

We should develop our own evidence. We should validate our own assessment instruments. We should evaluate whether interventions reduce rearrest, technical violations, substance use, institutional misconduct, and recidivism. We should determine which interventions work, for whom, under what conditions, and at what cost.

Therapeutic Community has contributed much to Philippine corrections. It should continue to have a place in our correctional institutions and criminology classrooms where the assessment indicates that it is appropriate. But respecting its contribution does not require turning it into doctrine.

The science of corrections has moved forward.

Philippine criminology education must move forward with it.

The future criminologist should not leave the university knowing only how to conduct a Therapeutic Community program. The future criminologist should know how to assess risk, identify criminogenic needs, select an appropriate intervention, implement it with fidelity, measure its results, and change course when the evidence says it is not working.

That is the difference between merely administering programs and practicing effective corrections.

And that is the kind of criminologist our correctional system now needs.

Photo: BJMP Malaybalay City Jail Facebook Post

References:

Andrews, D. A., Bonta, J., & Hoge, R. D. (1990). Classification for effective rehabilitation: Rediscovering psychology. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 17(1), 19–52.

Andrews, D. A., & Dowden, C. (2005). Managing correctional treatment for reduced recidivism: A meta-analytic review of programme integrity. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 10(2), 173–187.

Andrews, D. A., & Dowden, C. (2006). Risk principle of case classification in correctional treatment: A meta-analytic investigation. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 50(1), 88–100.

Bonta, J., & Andrews, D. A. (2007). Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation (User Report 2007-06). Public Safety Canada.

Landenberger, N. A., & Lipsey, M. W. (2005). The positive effects of cognitive-behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 1(4), 451–476.

Lowenkamp, C. T., Hubbard, D., Makarios, M. D., & Latessa, E. J. (2009). A quasi-experimental evaluation of Thinking for a Change: A “real-world” application. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 36(2), 137–146.

Lowenkamp, C. T., Latessa, E. J., & Holsinger, A. M. (2006). The risk principle in action: What have we learned from 13,676 offenders and 97 correctional programs? Crime & Delinquency, 52(1), 77–93.

Lowenkamp, C. T., Latessa, E. J., & Smith, P. (2006). Does correctional program quality really matter? The impact of adhering to the principles of effective intervention. Criminology & Public Policy, 5(3), 575–594.

Mitchell, O., Wilson, D. B., & MacKenzie, D. L. (2007). Does incarceration-based drug treatment reduce recidivism? A meta-analytic synthesis of the research. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 3(4), 353–375.

Pearce, S., & Pickard, H. (2013). How therapeutic communities work: Specific factors related to positive outcome. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 59(7), 636–645.