The “What Works” Debate and the Fit of Prison-Based Democratic TCs

Abstract

This chapter opens with a brief overview of the “nothing works/what works” debate. It sets out the history of research which initially concluded that interventions with prisoners were ineffectual until later evaluations adopted better designs and offered a more optimistic view of intervention outcomes. We also describe the originating therapeutic community (TC) in 1947, the Henderson Hospital. This has been identified as the first TC targeting an offender population within the UK. The ethos behind the democratic TC will be explained and the chapter will briefly review the history of how TCs have been adapted for prison settings. This will also involve touching on the debate over whether a TC can operate effectively within a prison setting and what limitations it faces in striving to do so, arguments we develop in the next chapter.