**12. Therapeutic communities in prisons**

Different authors agree that the environment and culture in prison are favorable for TC to be used because they bring to the prison environment a completely different paradigm than the host institution has. The fact is that the imprisonment itself is contrary to the basic principles of TC, mainly the principle of voluntariness and responsibility. The TC model, in contrast with the imprisonment, provides a complex of behavioral, cognitive, emotional and relational stimuli that lead to a change of self-concept and support maturation and socialization. Thus the initial conditions for TC are worse in prisons than anywhere else. In spite of these problems, it is possible to establish a community in prison with a high degree of joint control and ongoing process of social learning. In the last years, 10 treatment centers were established in Czech prisons for the treatment of inmates' drug addiction by abstinence. It is based on the standards for residential treatment in TC, including the phase format and therapeutic, educational, working and leisure-time components of a daily regimen. Efficient TC factors should be used in treatment programs as much as possible. Principles of this concept are currently applied in at least 4 out of 10 existing treatment centers, which, however cannot be confirmed from direct sources of the Czech Republic Prison Service because the term "therapeutic community" is not used there [17].
