The counselor must afflict the comfortable criminal. And it's a long and tedious process to convert a criminal into a responsible person. Some people with a criminal personality are not willing to change. That's surely what prisons are for. Other prisoners are amenable to habilitation and clearly have the capacity to make different choices.
Legal leverage helps to provide vulnerability.
The threat of bad consequences stimulates motivation to change. Samenow's theory explains a lot. Isolated programs to teach specialized occupational or social skills fail because they do not change the thinking processes necessary to use skills responsibly. The down side to Samenow's insights is that individual reform is demanding, time-consuming, and expensive. That leaves lots of room for more prisons.