Therapeutic Community Treatment of an Inmate Population with Substance Use Disorders: Post-Release Trends in Re-Arrest, Re-Incarceration, and Drug Misuse Relapse

Alexandra Galassi, Elias Mpofu and James Athanasou
Additional contact information
Alexandra Galassi: Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, P.O. Box 170, NSW 1826, Australia
Elias Mpofu: Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, P.O. Box 170, NSW 1826, Australia
James Athanasou: Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney, P.O. Box 170, NSW 1826, Australia

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: This systematic literature review maps the evidence for the effectiveness of the therapeutic community interventions (TCI) in reducing re-arrest, re-incarceration or drug misuse following release from prison, including the extent to which these effects are retained over time. The databases searched for the review included PsychINFO, Medline and Scopus and reference lists from relevant articles published between 2007 and 2014. Only quantitative studies that examined the effectiveness of TCI for a prisoner population with drug dependence at the time of initial incarceration were considered. Fourteen studies were identified for inclusion in the review. Three-quarters of the studies reported TCI were effective in reducing rates of re-incarceration. About 70% of studies that examined follow-up rates of drug misuse relapse found TCI effective in reducing rates of drug misuse amongst participants. TCI participation reduced re-arrests events in 55% of the studies. Results suggest TCI effective in the short-term rather than longer term for reducing rates of re-incarceration among participants, and to a slightly lesser extent, drug misuse relapse.

Keywords: community oriented treatment; inmates; re-offending; substance abuse; crime prevention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/6/7059/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/6/7059/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:6:p:7059-7072:d:51481

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().