Elien Neimeijer

122 related to coercive measures and appeared to be a mediator of the relation between qual- ity of group climate and coercive measures. From the perspective of the self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), a therapeutic group climate in which the amount of repression is minimised, meets three basic psychological needs of clients: a secure relational base (relatedness), exercising re- sponsibility and decision making (autonomy), and perceptions of ability (competence). Giving clients the opportunity to make decisions themselves in their daily care may help to restore some feelings of control over their own lives and has been suggested to be an important component of interventions that aim to reduce aggressive behaviour of cli- ents with intellectual disability (Blair & Kennedy, 2014; Frielink, 2017; Knotter, Wissink, Moonen, Stams, & Jansen, 2013). Secure forensic settings have a long history with a main concern on safety by exer- cising maximum control: high fences, physical security, locked doors and so on. It is based on the idea that physical control provides clarity and guarantees everyone’s safety. But maximum control actually has the risk of provoking maximum reactance and may therefore be counterproductive and may harm the quality of group climate (De Decker et al., 2018; Heynen et al., 2016; Ros et al., 2013; Van den Tillaart et al., 2018) as well as the quality of care in general (Boone, Althoff, & Koenraadt, 2016; Bowring-Lossock, 2006; De Valk, 2019; Doyle & Jones, 2013; Gillespie & Flowers, 2009; Hachtel et al., 2019; Van der Helm, 2011). Although the cause-effect relationship is still unclear, the association between repression and higher levels of aggression, as shown in chapter 3, stresses the importance of awareness on transactional processes between clients and sociotherapists that can transform into coercive cycles when aggressive behaviour of clients induces coercive responses by sociotherapists, which, in turn, causes aggressive behaviour by clients (De Valk, 2019). Maximum control actually has the risk of provoking maximum reactance and may therefore be counterproductive and may harm the quality of group climate This remains a field of tension in a secure (forensic) environment where limit set- ting is necessary for a structured and safe environment and treatment is compulsory. It is important to distinguish coercion from repression. Sociotherapists’ acting becomes repressive when the use of coercive measures is harmful, unlawful or arbitrary (De