Cognitive Behavioral Interventions and Misconduct Behind Bars: A Randomized Control Trial of Cognitive Behavioral Interventions Core Curriculum (CBI-CC), Delaware, 2019-2023 (ICPSR 39035)
Version Date: Apr 29, 2025 View help for published
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Daniel J. O'Connell, University of Delaware
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39035.v1
Version V1
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Institutional misconduct, especially violent misconduct, poses a problem for all prisons. To address the misconduct concern, this study tested whether an evidence-based, cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) program would reduce misconduct, including incidents of violent misconduct, and post-release arrests compared to non or less intensive CBT programming. The Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) implemented CBT-based programs in their institutions, which included the Cognitive Behavioral Interventions - Core Curriculum (CBI-CC) developed at the University of Cincinnati. The three programs addressed in this study include Thinking Things Through (TTT), Road to Recovery (R2R), and Reflections. TTT consisted of the instruments and materials of the CBI-CC, whereas R2R and Reflections focused on CBT skills and techniques. The Center for Drug and Health Studies (CDHS) in collaboration with DOC evaluated the impact of the program using administrative records and surveys with program participants.
Results indicated that all treatment groups performed better than the control group in terms of rearrest and incarceration. The group who received the intensive CBT treatment performed significantly better than all other groups. Intensive CBT treatment was thus effective in reducing recidivism. In terms of CBI-CC programming, participants had the highest rates of misconduct but saw a significant decrease after completing programming. In addition, both R2R and TTT have the lowest rates of rearrest after completing treatment programming compared to all other groups. This can be credited to the length and intensity of programming, as well CBT implemented within the programs.
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Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
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Building upon the goals and objectives of this analysis, the CDHS research team sought to answer multiple research questions. Specifically, how does CBI-CC impact prison misconduct and recidivism rates compare to different CBT programming? In addition, does CBI-CC have an impact of prison misconduct and recidivism rates compared to a control group?
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To evaluate the research teams hypotheses, a group of 1,236 adults incarcerated in Delaware prisons between August 2019 and September 2023 were assessed. Issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic interfered with the randomization procedures, so multinomial propensity scoring techniques were utilized to account for group differences. A series of bivariate crosstab and t-tests are presented in the report, followed by logistic regression and survival models. There was a total of 513 treatment participants and 723 control group participants; among the overall sample approximately 60% were released to the community and 70% of the treatment group successfully completed programming.
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Adult Prison Inmates in Delaware
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2025-04-29
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2025-04-29 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
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