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Adaptive Skills Residential Program

Adaptive Skills Residential Program

The Adaptive Skills Residential Program (ASRP) is designed to serve prisoners with moderate to serious adaptive problems due to a developmental disability or other cognitive impairment. These prisoners may or may not have a co-existing serious mental illness diagnosis. The ASRP is based on a bio-psychosocial rehabilitation model, whose goal is to improve the functioning and self-management of prisoners with developmental disabilities/cognitive limitations so they can adapt to the prison setting, decrease the likelihood of being victimized, becoming disruptive, or engaging in behavior which could result in a reclassification to administrative segregation, or to prepare them for community re-entry. Most prisoners admitted to the program will have moderate to serious functioning limitations in three or more of the following areas of major life activity: self-care, receptive and/or expressive language, learning, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living or economic self-sufficiency.

The ASRP utilizes a range of behavioral techniques including behavior reinforcement schedules, visually enhanced communications, and an enriched schedule of prisoner reinforcement and social skills training. Program activities designed to enhance independent living can include, but are not limited to, psychosocial skills, leisure skills, academic skills, stress management, self-management, anger management and problem solving. Treatment is conducted in clear, simple language, giving the prisoner additional time to learn and incorporate behavior changes and responses.