Individuals at ACJ Thrive in CT-R Class
Published on November 02, 2026
There’s palpable excitement as men bedecked in the lime-green garb of the Allegheny County Jail file into the room in the jail’s Re-Entry Center on Level 1. Some are in groups of two or three, others by themselves, but they are not at all alone.
Handshakes, bro hugs, high-fives and nicknames greet them all as they make their way to their seats set up in a semicircle facing a wall covered in posters and a mostly empty whiteboard.
It’s Graduation Day for a unique class taught by life coach facilitators from the Re-Entry Coaching Academy, or ReCA. The life coaches utilize Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy, or CT-R, in their programming, or “processing,” as ReCA life coach and class instructor Richard “Munch” Brown prefers to describe it.
Munch and his fellow life coaches, Kendra Russell Delacruz and Jamaar Blakey, bring lived experience to the program. All are formerly incarcerated individuals who utilized programming opportunities while serving time and are “paying it forward” as certified life coaches now that they’re out.
“We’re your end product, and this could be your truth, and you could get that,” Delacruz says. “You don’t have to go through all the (stuff) we went through to get there.”
This class boasts a 100 percent graduation rate, except for those released during the class’s six-week run, which, of course, is also cause for celebration.
Some are completing the course for the second or third time. Each cohort differs based on who is in the group. The life coaches facilitate the sessions, but the incarcerated participants determine the rules and guide the discussions where they want to go.
“It’s like reading a book,” says JT, who is matriculating from the class for the second time. “I might read this book and not have paid attention to this part of the book, but I go back and read it again and I’m like, ‘Oh, wow.’… That’s how good the book is – which is ReCA – that’s the book.”
Some individuals sign up for any class they can just to get off their housing unit. That’s no different in the CT-R class, but around Week 5 or 6, something clicks, Blakey says, and that leads to deeper understanding and greater self-discovery.
“When you start discovering things about yourself, you always want to take it a little further, especially being in prison,” Blakey says. “If you’re in this situation and you’re discovering yourself, you want to start doing your own research and seeing what’s working for you and not worrying about what’s not working for you.”
Today marks the end of the class, but certainly not the end of the journey, which inevitably is a lifelong endeavor. First, however, there is celebration, as Chips Ahoy and Doritos accompany resource packets on the laid out on the desks.
A (Very) Brief History of CT-R
So, what exactly is Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy, and how did it come to be used in correctional and other institutional settings?
CT-R itself is an offshoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is “a form of structured talk therapy that helps individuals learn to recognize and change negative patterns of thinking and behavior in order to better cope with challenging situations and improve overall quality of life,” per the Beck Institute, based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
Dr. Aaron Beck developed CBT as a treatment framework in the 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, he teamed with Paul Grant to develop CT-R as a treatment for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and to help others for whom traditional CBT was “not quite reaching,” according to Dr. Shelby Arnold, a forensic psychologist who has worked with the Beck Institute for seven years.
Arnold and licensed social worker Lindsey Pinto instructed the CT-R trainers at the ACJ and have taught CT-R concepts to other county employees to familiarize them with the discipline. Arnold and Pinto still periodically observe CT-R classes and offer feedback and additional instruction.
Whereas traditional CBT focuses on identifying and reframing negative beliefs to reduce symptoms, CT-R “flips it on its head a little bit” and is more “action-oriented,” Pinto said.
“What we're really trying to do is cultivate those positive beliefs that we all as humans experience when we feel most like ourselves and trying to recreate opportunities for those beliefs to get fired up and really active,” Pinto said.
From its beginning as a treatment for individuals in community-based treatment and state hospitals, CT-R found its way to carceral settings, which Arnold called “a natural progression.”
“It’s going to apply to anyone who feels stuck and feels sort of disconnected from the person that they want to be and the life they want to be living,” Arnold said. “These are folks who are prone to feel really defined by the situation or circumstance that they’re in, and CT-R is a really nice way to help them not feel that way and reconnect with the parts of themselves that are important.”
Finding the Best Version of Yourself
Back inside the Re-Entry Center, the class facilitators start by helping participants understand their strengths and “the best version of themselves,” which allows them to envision a different, more positive future than the past that led to their incarceration in the first place.
“It gives them hope, meaning and drive,” Delacruz says. “They see what was important (to them), why it was important, how it kind of got off track, and (they) see that there is another path.”
Keeping that end goal – whatever it is – in mind is essential. The CT-R process helps them picture that goal and take small, practical steps toward achieving that goal. It might be a closer relationship with their children, a new entrepreneurial venture or a return to coaching football.
Participants learn they don’t have to wait until they are released to make changes to help them achieve that goal. In fact, if they don’t make changes while incarcerated, it’s very difficult to implement them on the outside. To that end, the facilitators and fellow participants hold one another accountable through the 12-session, six-week class to ensure those habits become ingrained before release.
“A lot of people in a place like this, it’s everybody else’s fault but theirs,” DH says. “Being able to take accountability, knowing where I messed up at and the errors, the thinking errors that I’ve had during my life, that was a tool (I learned).”
Due to the personal specificity of their end goals, successful CT-R intervention can look different for each participant, and determining those goals is a key part of the process. Broadly, Pinto believes a successful outcome from CT-R therapy results in a person speaking in a confident, resilient way with clearly defined goals and utilizing the tools they learned to get there.
“They are able to see themselves as more than their circumstances,” Pinto said. “(Discussing) goals and aspirations that they have beyond, like, ‘I just want to get released’ and ‘I want to be done with my charges.’ That, to me, feels like good, successful CT-R.”
A Re-Entry Integration
This cognitive behavioral approach was part of the revamped and expanded Re-Entry Program that the jail and the Allegheny County Department of Human Services (ACDHS) collaborated to launch in 2025.
Through the Request-For-Proposal (RFP) process, the county awarded contracts to ReCA to facilitate the CT-R class, and to Foundation of HOPE to run housing unit activities based on CT-R curriculum created by the Beck Institute specifically for correctional settings.
With the goal of further integrating the CT-R concepts across the breadth of the ACJ Re-Entry Program, Arnold and Pinto also trained numerous jail and county employees in different disciplines to take a CT-R approach in their work with the incarcerated population, according to Jenn Batterton, the Director of ACDHS Office of Community Justice and Safety (OCJS).
“All of those providers have been trained in CT-R, specifically in how to take the core ingredients and elements of CT-R and sprinkle it into the existing curricula that they’re already using,” Arnold said. “The other groups (in re-entry) are not CT-R groups, but they’re CT-R informed in a lot of ways.”
Tre’ Thomas, the senior project manager for HOPE, which runs the jail’s chaplaincy and pre-release programs, underwent training with the re-entry providers from the Beck Institute. HOPE began offering structured pod activities last year, and Thomas said he purposefully integrates CT-R into all the lesson plans.
“I was looking for a framework for what we were doing,” Thomas said. “I didn’t want to have it seem like we were just showing up to do activities for the sake of doing activities. There was a purpose behind it, and CT-R really helped to lay out that purpose in the best way.”
Like the ReCA leaders, Thomas and other re-entry providers utilizing CT-R are not trained therapists. But the program “is a non-clinical approach and group that can be delivered by peers and non-clinicians,” Batterton wrote.
“In the case of ReCA, facilitators are trained life coaches and formerly incarcerated, so they bring that expertise to the work of delivering CT-R,” Batterton added.
The lived experience is key. Formerly incarcerated individuals can connect on a foundational level to those currently incarcerated who are taking the class. This helps current clients relate to their instructors and better integrate the CT-R concepts into their re-entry journey.
“It’s familiarity – it’s not just someone teaching out of a book or something they learned on a computer,” TF said. “They have real-life experience. They’ve lived it, so it’s easier to teach something that you’ve lived.”
External Support Proves Essential
The habits developed and tools learned in the CT-R class don’t end at graduation or even at release. In many ways, that’s when the real work begins. Re-entering society eliminates the structure participants have while incarcerated. ReCA offers follow-up classes outside the jail that take place on Monday and Wednesday evenings. ReCA also can provide other material or emotional support that returning citizens need like assistance with housing, clothing or family connections
Munch says they’re available as long as the clients need support.
“We start to connect them with what’s important to them right there at the moment,” Munch says. “We still give them the same CT-R tools, but it’s more in-depth because they’re free, and we can connect them with any provider they need. We walk along with them as they do it.”
But first things first: Today is still Graduation Day, a time to celebrate what they’ve accomplished and anticipate what they still plan to do.
“When we started this class, we had our minds made up – we were living our lives a certain way, and nobody could tell us nothing,” DH says. “But they challenge you on that, to be comfortable while being uncomfortable.
“That was a huge thing, to have to sit back and listen to all your thinking errors and listen to why you were wrong, and why you can’t put it on anyone else and being able to adapt and grow,” he continues.
After they receive their certificates, some of the graduates offer words of wisdom or share something they’ve learned through the process. Then they pose for a class picture and chat amongst themselves, celebrating their accomplishment.
Some class members are still facing trial. They may be headed for a state institution. Others are serving sentences or in jail on probation violations and will be going home soon. They all believe the class can help anyone regardless of why or how long they will be incarcerated.
“You create a whole person,” Blakey said. “You get some harsh truths, do some introspective work, you take a deep look at yourself and become more aware of yourself and your surroundings, your relationships with people, and you go home a different type of person. You have this skill that you can use in any aspect of your life.”
Blakey, Munch and Delacruz are living examples of formerly incarcerated people who went to prison one way and came home different types of people. With their life-coaching experience and CT-R training, they hope those members of this class and the many to follow can join them, too.
“Whatever you want your future to look like, we walk with you,” Munch said. “Because your future is our vision.”
Media inquiries may be directed to Jesse Geleynse, Public Information Officer for the Allegheny County Jail
jesse.geleynse@alleghenycounty.us or by phone at 412-350-1267 or 412-760-4790 (cell).