Effects of Moral Reconation Therapy on female felony offenders in a prison-based therapeutic community

Tennessee implemented a drug treatment program for female offenders housed at the Tennessee Prison for Women (TPW), a state of Tennessee prison located in Nashville. The program was organized and gradually developed as a drug therapeutic community and is operated under contract from the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) with initial funding through RSAT. When the program began, it was housed in a 141-bed Annex of the TPW. In October 2001, the program moved into its own dormitory in the main TPW complex. The program houses 64 female offenders with each participant in the program for at least six months. Since its beginning, the program has essentially operated at full capacity. The program utilizes Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT®) as its primary treatment component (Little & Robinson, 1988) and maintains all the traditional aspects of therapeutic communities. Several previous outcome evaluations of the TPW Program have been published. Those papers included findings from a total of 912 female offenders who had entered the program and were released either because of program completion or other reasons. The present study evaluates the recidivism of all participants who have been released from the program and presents pre- and posttest results from the 2004-2005 clients