Practice Issues and Research Overview

Abstract

This chapter will offer some final reflections and try to answer the questions raised in the introductory chapter, namely the role played by private prisons, the very existence of TCs within prisons and the means to discover “what works” in a TC prison intervention. In doing we try and identify some of the aspirations discussed by Roland Woodward in his foreword enabling the unlocking of patterns of criminal behaviours through the therapuetic processes that give people their opportunity to change Richard Shuker opines that “despite their significant role as an intervention, the potential of the TC approach to inform wider forensic practice is perhaps not fully recognised or understood” (Shuker, 2010, p. 50). In part, he says that this is due to the shortage of “good quality evidence” (p. 52). De Leon (2000) suggests that whilst we know something about whether the TC works we know less about why and how (original italics). We hope the evidence presented in this book will make a contribution to fill that gap. We provide a commen- tary on the research process and the realities of conducting research within a prison TC. Managing longitudinal research in a forensic setting carries with it a number of challenges, not least continuity of the research setting, emo- tional load on and support for the researchers, and the vagaries of the prison system. In addition, the ethics of conducting research, engaging with a liter- ally “captive” audience, managing disclosures, preserving confidentiality and reporting experiences present live issues which the present authors resolved in a number of ways, as discussed below. We also include here a summary of the TC outcomes and suggest in what ways the findings may impact on policy, implementation and practice.