Disclosure and explanation of the committing offense is the beginning of the residents’ treatment process because it is important for them to take responsibility for the crimes they committed.  Residents begin to explore their thinking patterns and the hurtful choices they made in committing their crimes. This is done in at the beginning of treatment because in order to change the residents must be honest and take responsibility about the negative choices that led them into treatment.  This treatment stage helps residents to recognize that their crime did “not just happen”, but was planned out in detail and a decision was made by them to commit the crime.

Residents discuss and explain their perceptions of their life history from the earliest age they remember until the present day.  The purpose of stage two discussions is to have residents begin to identify what kind of patterns and connections in their life in order to change them.  While residents are sharing their autobiography, the therapist and the group help them to identify traumatic experiences to process during the next stage of treatment.

Therapists use a variety of affective techniques to help the residents get in touch with and work through emotions involved with the traumas they have experienced.  Residents are taught a variety of ways to appropriately express these feelings.   Residents are helped to understand how life experiences have influenced their emotions and behavior development and how they may have used life traumas to give themselves “permission” to become a perpetrator.  Therapists then help residents to connect their feelings of trauma to the hurt and pain they have caused their victims, families and communities.  This act of trauma connections establishes elementary feelings of empathy within the resident.  Lastly, the residents identify themselves as a survivor of their traumas, instead of a victim.

During stage four, residents explore in detail, their negative criminal behavior patterns and thinking errors first identified during their autobiography stage.  Residents disclose all of their negative behavior and how their thinking patterns impacted their behavior.  They also make connections between sexual history and how their thinking errors impacted it.  They learn to take responsibility for their thinking patterns and how they relate to unsafe sexual practices and other delinquent acts.  Usually by this stage of treatment they have built enough trust in the therapeutic process to disclose honest personal information and to become invested in their own life changes.

At this more advanced stage of therapy, residents begin to learn their emotional triggers, patterns of thinking and criminal thinking errors, which has led to their negative and criminal behaviors.  This is the stage where residents are expected to exhibit consistent behavior changes utilizing both self talk and external coping mechanisms to combat their thinking errors.  Therapeutic explanation of the offense cycle includes the youth acting like a they are a victim when they are not, blaming others for their negative choices, avoiding dealing with feelings appropriately, the fantasy and planning they utilized, the rush they got out of their negative behavior and how they justified their negative behavior.  In order to move on to the next stage, the resident must demonstrate that they have internalized what they have learned by making consistent positive choices.

The establishment of empathy (putting yourself in other person’s shoes) is a crucial concept for residents to understand and internalize to prevent future recidivism.  At this stage of treatment residents are given various exercises to help them develop empathy and generate feelings for the pain and fear others have gone through as a result of their negative choices.  Residents must also develop a restorative justice project that exhibits their knowledge and comprehensive understanding of the milestones of restorative justice.

As residents prepare to successfully reintegrate back into the community they must develop a personal relapse prevention plan as it relates to reoffending and substance abuse.  Residents explore their past and future high risk situations and the obstacles that they may face when they return to the community.  The therapists work closely with referral sources to ensure appropriate aftercare services are in place for the youth’s return to the community.