Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT)

History of MRT CCI staff began providing MRT—Moral Reconation Therapy® at the Shelby County Corrections Center in Tennessee in 1987. It was one of the first cognitive-behavioral implementations for offender populations that became operationalized into treatment workbooks. The program was developed by Drs. Greg Little and Ken Robinson. Because of the immediate beneficial impact that was seen, the program was expanded and offered to the general inmate population and various specialty programs. The first MRT programs won several national awards in the late 1980s. It was then widely implemented in social programs for youth in Puerto Rico and utilized in drug courts at the start of the drug court movement in the early 1990s. In 2008, MRT was given the status of an “Evidence-Based Program” by SAMHSA. There are MRT workbooks available for a wide-range of treatment issues, and several hundred research studies have been published that demonstrate the effectiveness of MRT. Today, MRT materials are utilized in programs in all 50 states and in 9 countries covering a vast range of treatment issues and treatment venues. Specialized MRT workbooks are used for substance abuse treatment, DUI/DWI offenders, domestic violence, trauma, anger management, codependency, job readiness, parenting, juveniles, Veterans, and others.