Program Goals
Targeted Interventions for Corrections (TIC) consists of six brief life-skill interventions to be used in a variety of correctional-based settings. The interventions address the core aspects of addiction treatment and recovery. They focus on what incarcerated individuals need to work on to improve their potential for early engagement in treatment and early recovery, including motivation for treatment, controlling anger, opening lines of communication, correcting criminal thinking errors, and improving social networks. The overall goal of TIC is to provide interventions that address drug-related problems and treatment needs in correctional populations.
Target Population
To be eligible to participate, inmates must have received a referral from a correctional authority to participate in a treatment program, have enough time remaining on their sentence to complete the intervention, and provide consent to participate in treatment.
Program Components
The TIC interventions were designed to be user friendly, manual guided, and short (interventions averaged four sessions each). The six life-skills interventions include motivation (TIC–Motivation); understanding and reducing angry feelings (TIC–Anger); ideas for better communication (TIC–Communication); unlocking your thinking, opening your mind (TIC–Criminal Thinking); building social networks (TIC–Social Networks); and common sense ideas for HIV prevention and sexual health (TIC–HIV/Sexual Health).
TIC–Motivation concentrates on aspects of cognition that govern decisions to change behavior. Participants are engaged through visual communication tools and strategies. During the intervention, participants pick a specific behavior to work on and report their progress to the group. The leader of the session works from a script. Discussion questions are also available, which explore the meaning of motivation. Information is presented in a strengths-based perspective that encourages participants to set goals. Topics in the manual for this intervention include Motivation 101 Introduction, Art of Self-Motivation, Staying Motivated, and Making Motivation Second Nature.
TIC–Anger is viewed as a basic building block of TIC, since individuals involved in the criminal justice system often experience anger. TIC–Anger intervention teaches participants appropriate ways to deal with their anger, so they are better equipped to handle difficult or unpredictable situations. Participants learn how to identify anger triggers, plan strategies to interrupt angry patterns, and use muscle relaxation techniques. The intervention includes topics such as Understanding Anger, Managing Anger in Relationships, Mapping Worksheets, The Aggression Cycle, and Links of Interest.
TIC–Communication emphasizes the importance of communication in relationships. Though other interventions within TIC may take precedence over TIC–Communication, communication is still viewed as important to improving participants’ morale. Concepts such as “making amends,” forgiving others and letting go of resentments, and learning to distinguish between healthy supportive relationships and unhealthy relationships are taught during the course of this intervention. Participants are encouraged to build connections, develop effective listening and communication skills, and break down any barriers to relationships. Topic areas in the intervention manual include Communication Roadblocks, Repairing Relationships, Communication Styles, Mapping Worksheets, and Links of Interest.
TIC–Criminal Thinking addresses the pattern of ingrained criminal thinking. Rather than accepting that individuals involved in the criminal justice system will continue to engage in criminogenic behaviors, TIC–Criminal Thinking offsets this cycle by establishing higher levels of therapeutic engagement for participants during treatment. Participants are challenged to address destructive thinking patterns, break these negative habits, and incorporate recovery-appropriate thinking, actions, and habits into their life. Topic areas covered in the intervention manual include Feelings, Thoughts, and Mind Traps; Road Block to Healthy Thinking; Thinking and Behavior Cycles; Mapping Worksheets; and Links of Interest.
TIC–Social Networks concentrates on teaching participants qualities they should look for in friends and family that will help them as they strive to achieve their recovery goals. Participants are informed that it may be necessary to make new friends to truly recover, and are taught how to do so. Not only are participants taught about the importance of making new friends who are drug free, but they also are taught how to interact with old friends who are still using drugs. Involvement in a support group and the importance of finding a sponsor are also discussed during the sessions. The intervention manual includes sections such as Social Networks in Recovery, Support Groups and Your Recovery, When Other Family Members Use, Mapping Worksheets, and Links of Interest.
Finally, TIC–HIV/Sexual Health provides participants with knowledge and skills to reduce HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Participants are taught up-to-date HIV statistics and facts and fictions about HIV transmission. Participants also partake in a risk game to further their knowledge. In addition, participants learn how to protect themselves through role-play activities designed to identify the core issues about sexual health and how to appropriately handle sexually risky scenarios. Sections of the manual include HIV Update, Acting to Protect Your Health, Mapping Worksheets, and Links of Interest.
Program Theory
The TIC modules use the Texas Christian University (TCU) Mapping-Enhanced Counseling strategy (i.e., node-link mapping). Mapping-enhanced counseling works to improve the counselor–client relationship in areas such as goal development, problem solving, treatment engagement, and communication. With node-link mapping, nodes and links are created based on key ideas from conversations in counseling sessions to graphically capture the gist of the matter for further discussion and processing. Maps help illustrate thoughts, feelings, actions, and goals and show how they are related (or linked together). Mapping is based on cognitive network models of long-term memory, employing a simple, active declarative grammar that capitalizes on spatial organization to increase understanding and memory (Joe et al. 1997).
