The research is based on the professional licentiate thesis specialised in Empowering Social Work written by Vuokko Karsikas. The thesis was graded by the Department of Social Policy of the University of Helsinki in 27 May 2005 and approved by the Faculty of Social Sciences on 14 September 2005.

The Prison Service is expected to contribute to the decrease of recidivism. Due to this, the Prison Service provides rehabilitative activities, which are intended to enhance the prisoners' potential to lead a life without crime. The object of this study is to determine the rehabilitation of prisoners especially with substance abuse problems and the preconditions for it at personal and communal level and as a societal issue using empowerment as the theoretical keyword. The empowerment enables to assess an individual's change process and the possibilities of the Prison Service to contribute to breaking the cycle of substance abuse and crime. The study covers the rehabilitation process of prisoners allocated to an external rehabilitation facility, i.e. the Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association, beginning in prison and continuing until their release phase. The Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association is a unit specialised in the rehabilitation and training of offenders.

This study is qualitative by nature. The primary data consist of themed interviews of thirteen prisoners who have been allocated in the Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association during their sentence; the secondary data contains interviews with six employees of the association and written documents. The data-based analysis of the interviews is made by using hermeneutical phenomenological approach. This study focuses on breaking the cycle of substance abuse and crime and to the rehabilitation's significance in the empowerment process. The empowerment of the prisoner is examined from physical, mental, and social angles. In addition to the empowerment, the key viewpoints when analysing the results are the motivation to break the cycle of substance abuse and crime, the overcoming of an addiction, social support and the principles of community treatment.

The interviews with the prisoners suggest that before their arrival in prison they had led substance-oriented lives, which had driven their lives into chaos. The interviews with the employees of the Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association revealed deficiencies in the social skills of the prisoners due to their marginal lifestyle. Based on the interviews with the prisoners, I found in my research that their empowerment started when they noticed that the negative influences of the substances overcame the positive ones and, hence, wanted to change their lives. Rehabilitation increased their motivation to change and had empowering effects on physical, mental, and social levels. The substance rehabilitation provided in prison helped the subjects to stop to use substances, opened their eyes to see their situation, and increased the motivation for substance-free life. Nevertheless, prison environment did not always support their rehabilitation, which requires creating a substance-free, safe, and appreciative atmosphere, listening to people's needs, and offering an environment and activities contributing to the rehabilitation process.

The Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association offered the persons in rehabilitation a soft landing to freedom, which included learning necessary skills to lead a substance-free life, setting one's affairs in order, and accustoming to the demands of the society in safe surroundings. The association also enabled to adopt a new identity to replace the identity of a prisoner. The employees of the association also saw signs of the initiation of the subjects' empowerment process. The subjects attended to the rehabilitation offered by the association usually from two to six months before their release. The rehabilitation period of most of the subjects was carried out as planned but, on four occasions, it was interrupted due to substance use and those persons were returned to prison. Approximately half of the subjects intended to continue attending to the rehabilitation of the Silta-Valmennusyhdistys association after their release, either in the form of support housing and/or training or on-the-job training as the next step in the rehabilitation process.

Based on the results, the most important way of coping in freedom was to many of the subjects to break all contact with their friends who used drugs, because if they did not, they would have difficulties in staying clean and avoiding committing crimes. The subjects attempted to build new social networks to replace their friends who used drugs. They also expected social support from their family and other close people.
Breaking the cycle of substance abuse and crime does not depend solely on people's own will but it also requires that their varying needs of services are noted in the services provided by the society. To realise it in practice, one has to find such structural solutions, which ensure the possibility to reintegrate those released from prison to the society

The research: Selvinpäin olosta tulee hyvä fiilis