Use your words: Written prisoner interactions predict whether they’ll clean up their acts
The relationships between prisoners enrolled in "therapeutic communitie s," groups that focus on rehabilitation from drug and alcohol addiction, are key to those programs' effectiveness, said researcher Keith Warren, an associate professor of social work at The Ohio State University. And the theory behind these efforts rests on the idea that peer interaction will support learning that displaces ingrained (and unhealthy) ways of thinking that stand in the way of people leaving addiction behind. In this study, the first to test that theory, Warren and co-author Nathan Doogan, a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State's College of Public Health, analyzed tens of thousands of written communications collected at four minimum-security facilities in Ohio with programs designed as an alternative to traditional prison time. The more a participant's language choices changed during rehab, the less likely he was to return to prison, they found. The study was published ...