Offender Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Communities

Dr Alisa Stevens, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Southampton has recently published a new book titled 'Offender Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Communities'.

For her DPhil, Dr Stevens observed and interviewed residents (prisoners) and staff at the therapeutic communities (TCs) at HMPs Grendon, Gartree, and Send. These remarkable establishments offer serious (often life-sentenced, violent or sexually violent) offenders the opportunity to engage in group psychotherapy to help them understand themselves and their lives better, while living within a small, supportive penal community. Her research was published as the book Offender Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Communities, and her core argument is contained in the Criminology and Criminal Justice journal article ‘I am the person now I was always meant to be’.

This recent publication has been reviewed in the British Journal of Criminology as a 'scholarly, insightful and often-compelling study of therapeutic communities' which 'makes a significant contribution to the ongoing resurgence in ethnographic studies of the modern prison ... [and] deserves to be widely read'

To view the review please click here.