  In the United States, the Therapeutic Community (TC) treatment model for
substance use disorder recovery relies heavily upon the assumption that peers
serve as mentors, affirming behavior consistent with the norms of the treatment
model and correcting behavior contrary to those norms. Despite being
foundational to the TC model, little work has been done to clearly
conceptualize and operationalize this hierarchy. In this manuscript, we fill
that gap in the literature, presenting a novel conceptualization of hierarchy
within the TC context, complete with a complementary measurement drawing from
the field of social network analysis. With this new framework for understanding
and studying hierarchy within TCs, we can ask and rigorously answer a new set
of questions previously unexamined.
