Bigger update- on my Doctoral studies
I’m excited to share the focus of my doctoral work: improving reentry programming in city and county jails for people with mental illness and/or substance use disorders. My research examined how to make reentry interventions more effective by strengthening the Responsivity component of the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) model through an innovative integration of Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ). The result is a framework I call Therapeutic Jurisprudence–informed Risk-Needs-Responsivity (TJ‑informed RNR).
Key points of the work
Population and setting: The study focused on individuals detained in local jails who experience mental illness and/or substance use disorders—populations that face high barriers to successful community reentry and elevated risks of recidivism, homelessness, and treatment disengagement.
Problem addressed: Traditional RNR-based programs often emphasize risk and criminogenic needs but can fall short in tailoring interventions to individual capacities, learning styles, cultural backgrounds, and treatment readiness—core elements of Responsivity. When responsivity is low, even evidence-based interventions fail to produce expected outcomes.
Conceptual innovation: Therapeutic Jurisprudence examines law, legal processes, and legal actors for their therapeutic or anti-therapeutic effects. I applied TJ principles to the Responsivity domain to create a more humane, engagement-focused approach that considers how legal environments, correctional procedures, and staff interactions influence motivation, dignity, and treatment uptake.
TJ-informed RNR components:
Procedural and relational responsivity: Prioritizing fair, respectful, and transparent procedures within jails and during reentry planning to enhance trust and motivation.
Contextual responsivity: Adapting interventions to legal contexts (e.g., court conditions, supervision requirements) so those conditions support therapeutic goals rather than undermine them.
Communication and framing: Training staff and legal actors to use language and practices that reduce stigma, increase perceived procedural justice, and foster help-seeking.
Structural supports: Aligning release planning, community supervision, and service referrals to remove systemic barriers (housing, benefits reinstatement, transportation) that impede treatment engagement.
Individual tailoring: Assessing and incorporating cognitive, cultural, and clinical factors—trauma history, learning needs, symptom presentation—into intervention selection and delivery.
Methods and evidence: The dissertation combined literature synthesis with qualitative and quantitative data collected from jail staff, legal actors, service providers, and people with lived experience of reentry. Findings showed that TJ-informed adjustments to responsivity—especially improved procedural fairness, clearer communication about legal expectations, and coordinated linkages to services—were associated with higher engagement in post-release services and greater participant-reported readiness for change.
Practical implications:
Trainings for corrections, probation, and court personnel emphasizing therapeutic communication, trauma-informed practices, and procedural justice.
Reentry planning protocols that explicitly map legal conditions onto therapeutic goals and reduce conflicting demands.
Screening tools to identify responsivity barriers and match intervention modalities (e.g., cognitive-behavioral groups, motivational enhancements, peer supports) to individual profiles.
Policy recommendations to minimize unnecessary punitive conditions that hinder access to treatment (e.g., inflexible curfews, conflicting program requirements).
Potential benefits: Implementing TJ-informed RNR can increase treatment engagement, improve continuity of care, reduce technical violations and recidivism, and support more humane legal practices that respect dignity and promote rehabilitation.
Conclusion
Therapeutic Jurisprudence–informed Risk-Needs-Responsivity reframes Responsivity not only as an individual matching problem but as an interactional and systemic one—shaped by legal processes, staff behavior, and structural supports. By integrating TJ principles into RNR-based reentry programming, jails, courts, and community partners can create conditions that better support the recovery and reintegration of people with mental illness and substance use disorders. If you’d like, I can summarize specific training modules, screening items, or policy changes that flow from this framework.
