The center, an 80-bed juvenile detention facility located in Nashville, Tennessee, is designed to provide secure care and custody of male and female juveniles under the age of 18 who are detained by order and under the authority of the Davidson County Juvenile Court. Services will include education, case management, and anger management and substance abuse education, as appropriate. The program encourages participation of biological families when appropriate by offering family counseling and specialized training services that foster family communication and reintegration. The core curriculum is based on a unique model of cognitive behavior therapy, The Belief Change System, aimed at changing the clusters of dysfunctional beliefs that are prevalent in young sex offenders. The goal of the program is to identify thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and beliefs, and to ultimately develop and reinforce alternative thoughts and related behaviors.
Residents learn to revise their aberrant thinking patterns through an ongoing record of change.
The program milieu, individual therapy, and group therapy all revolve around the record of negative thinking, and help the resident to understand how this has resulted in his personal sexual offense system. For those residents who have learning disabilities and reading problems, the entire curriculum is available on audio tape. Additional foci include the issues of substance abuse and psychotropic medication . The Belief Change System yields data that demonstrate the change in the young men who have been treated at The BSP, and provides an anchor for aftercare services. In addition, The Cottage Program at The BSP, which serves intellectually limited, psychosexually disturbed adolescent males, uses a tailored edition of the curriculum that presents material in a manner consistent with their levels of cognitive and social functioning.