The heart and soul of the transforming environment: How a values-driven ethos sustains a therapeutic community for sexual offenders

Therapeutic communities (TCs) rely on the activation of energies latent within, but common to, any human group. The intervention involves harnessing these energies in collaborative efforts to promote rehabilitative intentions. This chapter is about our experiences of working with prison-based therapeutic communities for men who have offended sexually. More specifically, it focuses on efforts to evoke the underlying values critical to such communities, to incorporate them in the therapeutic method, and to give expression to them in promoting rehabilitative ends. We argue that in the absence of such intervention, alternative values inimical to the therapeutic community, are likely to take hold.