Self-help in the Context of Addiction, Penal System and Release from Prison

The interest of the qualitative study ist the question of how self-help services for addiction are used in the context of prison and how these group services are perceived and assessed by inmates, prison officers and social workers.

For this project, self-help groups of the Blaues Kreuz e.V. will be examined from multiple perspectives through participatory observations of group meetings in women's and men's prisons. In addition, group discussions and narrative interviews will be conducted with inmates, prison officers and professionals.

The study is conceived as practice research and is embedded in a real laboratory with social work students at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. The aim of the study is an in-depth analysis of the practices, interpretations and social negotiations that are associated with addiction self-help services and that emerge among the involved. The empirical findings are to be used to derive information on the question of how addiction support services can be designed in prison and after release from prison.