Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802, USA; Criminal Justice Research Center, Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine, 3151 Social Sciences Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019 Oct 1;203:13-18. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2019.05.018. Epub 2019 Aug 1.
The Therapeutic Community (TC) is a common treatment modality for incarcerated individuals with substance use disorders. TCs rely on peer group processes to promote lasting behavioral and identity change, yet prior research has not adequately tested the peer influence mechanisms underlying the theoretical model. This study applied dynamic network analysis to estimate peer influence processes central to TC philosophy.
A stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) was applied to ten months of social network data collected from prisoner surveys within a TC unit (N = 62) in a medium-security Pennsylvania prison. Respondents (N = 177, 84% of unit) completed at least one prison survey and provided network and community role model nominations.
Although residents' levels of treatment engagement were significantly correlated with their nominated peers, estimates of peer influence for treatment engagement were non-significant in longitudinal network models. Nor were estimates of peer influence significantly greater for peers perceived as community role models. Rather, inmates connected with peers who were of similar treatment engagement as themselves (i.e., a peer selection process), and the latter primarily resulted from racial homophily in the TC social network.
Inconsistent with the desired treatment model, treatment engagement diffusion was not evident in the sampled TC. Results suggested that highly-engaged residents clustered together at the center of the TC's social structure but had little impact on less-engaged and peripheral inmates. The relatively short (i.e., four-month) program length and moderate-to-low treatment fidelity likely contributed to the lack of peer influence processes.
治疗社区（TC）是一种常见的治疗药物滥用障碍监禁个体的治疗模式。TC 依赖同伴群体过程来促进持久的行为和身份改变，但先前的研究并没有充分测试理论模型背后的同伴影响机制。本研究应用动态网络分析来估计 TC 哲学中核心的同伴影响过程。
对宾夕法尼亚州一所中等安全监狱 TC 单元内囚犯调查中收集的十个月社交网络数据（N=62）应用随机主体定向模型（SAOM）。受访者（N=177，占单位的 84%）完成了至少一次监狱调查，并提供了网络和社区角色模型提名。
尽管居民的治疗参与度与他们提名的同伴显著相关，但在纵向网络模型中，治疗参与度的同伴影响估计并不显著。对于被视为社区角色模型的同伴，同伴影响的估计也没有显著增加。相反，囚犯与治疗参与度与自己相似的同伴建立联系（即同伴选择过程），而后者主要是由于 TC 社交网络中的种族同质性。
与预期的治疗模式不一致，在抽样的 TC 中没有明显的治疗参与扩散。结果表明，高度参与的居民聚集在 TC 社会结构的中心，但对参与度较低和处于边缘的囚犯几乎没有影响。相对较短（即四个月）的项目长度和中等至低的治疗保真度可能导致缺乏同伴影响过程。
