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This chapter provides a rationale and strategy for developing cognitive behavioral communities in prison, drawing on the structure of correctional therapeutic communities (TCs), which were developed to address addiction, and incorporating the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions. Such programs would jettison some of the controversial elements of TCs but retain and use the community structure to foster a treatment environment in which participants would be immersed in CBT principles 24-7 in their living unit. One key problem facing both prison administrators and prisoners is the “street culture” aspect of the prison environment. It is not surprising that, left to their own devices, prison inmates develop values and cultural rules that reflect the streets from which they came. This culture leads to increased violence and management issues in the prison and fosters an environment that is not conducive to change. By bringing CBT principles into the lives of program participants, Cognitive Communities can foster living environments that are more conducive to behavioral change. In the 1990s, therapeutic community programs were deemed the gold standard of in-prison substance abuse treatment, and they were widely implemented.1 TCs are an immersive treatment model that function 24-7 and provide a separate living environment away from prison culture to foster a living situation that favors change. People in TCs live the treatment with the underlying approach “acting as if”; that is, if one behaves a certain way the individual will eventually adopt the principles he or she is living. The nature of TCs requires staff and participants alike to use day-today living and events that occur on the unit as tools that enable change.Properly implemented, TCs are thus difficult to operate and require well-trained staff. Budgetary constraints make it difficult to maintain staff with proper qualifications to effectively operate TCs, so many function as TCs in name only, taking on the label “modified TC.” Researchers and practitioners following another path developed CBT. CBT focuses on thinking as opposed to acting, with the idea that if you change how people think, you can change their behavior. CBT programs have developed a research base indicating the approach’s effectiveness. Practitioners began merging the two concepts in the early 2000s to create a variety of new therapeutic models, and the Virginia Department of Corrections operates what it labels as Cognitive Communities. The idea was to implement CBT programmatic tools into a TC structure, creating a hybrid model that can change participant behavior while transforming prison culture one cell block at a time. In what follows, we provide a brief overview of both approaches and suggest that programs, such as the one in Virginia, point to a combined model that draws on the strengths of both approaches, which, if synthesized, could create a more effective treatment model that can enhance prison safety and take cell blocks back from the streets.
