Criminal MOM Anger Management Flashcards
What is Anger Managment?
Anger Management is a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which attempts to change the way a person thinks. Based on cognitive assumptions of behaviour is influenced by internal mental processes and our brains work like a computer.
Unlike what is presented in movies, most violent crimes are not planned and instead happen as a spur of the moment because of a sudden rush of anger at a situation. This is because when an individual is angry, they make poor decisions, lose control of their behaviour and may judge the future consequences of their actions accurately.
Anger is a powerful human emotion and when strong enough, anger can hijack an individual’s behaviour leading to harmful often criminal behaviour.
What are the short and long term aims of anger management
Short Term: Reduce the levels of anger and aggressive behaviour in prisons
Long Term: Reduce Rates of recidivism once someone is released from prison.
If anger can be controlled then offenders who are prone to angry outbursts may be able to reduce the likelihood that their anger causes them to engage in criminal, violent behaviour.
As this is a cognitive approach, it aims to change their output. As the input (being the frustrating situation) may be unavoidable, but someone can change the way they view and respond to the situation aka their output)
What is the key study of anger managment?
KEY STUDY: Novaco (2011) Identified three additional key aims for an anger management programme.
Cognitive restructuring – Gaining self-awareness and control over the thoughts. Turning irrational thoughts into rational ones.
Regulation of arousal – Learning how to control physiological state / relieving tension.
Behavioural strategies – Learning problem solving skills.
Novaco refers to prisons as ‘efficient anger factories’ he claims being imprisoned is likely to increase the amount of anger expressed by prisoners for several reasons:
1) Prisons are overcrowded
2) Other Prisoners tend to be violent / aggressive.
3) Prisoners feel the need to act tough to survive.
Why is anger management needed
Anger Management is needed since criminals tend to have irrational thinking patterns and cognitive distortions such as hostile attribution bias.
A hostile attribution bias is when someone will always view someone elses behaviour in a negative way, Even if their behaviour wasn’t negative at all.
What model does a Anger Management programme follow and what are the three stages to this?
Anger management programmes follow a stress inoculation model. These are like non-biological vaccines; in that they protect an individual against a situation. It helps individuals better able to cope and with frustrating situations and not engage in aggressive behaviour.
Conceptualisation: Clints learn about anger in general. That it is a feeling and not a behaviour. Clients analyse their own patterns of anger and situations that would make them angry and why
Skill acquisition and rehearsal: This phase involves teaching skills to better manage frustrating situations, such as how to change their initial thoughts and methods to relax as well as how to communicate to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner.
Application: Clients practise their newly learnt skills such as in controlled role-playing situations and later in a real-life setting
Describe an example of an anger management programme
One example of anger management programme is CALM (Controlling anger and learning to manage it) This programme helps participants to control, monitor and understand their emotions to prevent aggressive behaviour. Includes step by step progression
Relaxation
An important part of CALM is helping the offender to know how to release any tension / frustration they may feel. This could prevent them from letting the tension build up and be released as aggression.
ABC MODEL
This task links to the hostile attribution bias present in offenders.
Offenders are made to consider alternative attributions of other people’s behaviour and how this would impact their behaviour.
One strength of Anger management
One Strength of the effectiveness of anger management as a method of modifying criminal behaviours is that it has supporting research evidence for example Ireland et al (2004) assessed 50 young male prisoners on anger management compared to a control group of 37 prisoners.
It was found that 12% showed improvement in management of their anger, supporting that anger management as a treatment is effective.
However, a counterpoint could be that the study could be inaccurate as it uses a self-report and offenders are more likely to lie about their anger management to look good on parole and reduce restrictions.
One strength of Anger management
One Strength of anger management is the social implications. For example, if anger management is proven too heavily reduce recidivism, then it can be used to shorten sentences of offenders who are seen as having made good progress, This will heavily benefit the economy as it costs 40 thousand every year to hold just one person in jail meaning over years anger management programmes could save the government hundreds of millions of pounds while maintaining low rates of recidivism.
One weakness of Anger management
One weakness of the ethics of anger management programmes is the issue of a lack of consent, this is because offenders are often forced by courts to undergo an anger management programme as part of their prison sentence and a refusal may result in a longer sentence. In other cases, anger management is a condition of their probation and refusal can mean a return to prison.
On the one hand, taking people’s free will away could be seen as unethical and wrong however, it could be argued their free will is already being limited as they have been imprisoned.
It could also be argued that the potential benefits to the offender and society may outweigh the ethical costs to the offenders so ethically the removal of valid consent could be justified.
One weakness of Anger management
Another weakness of the ethics of anger management is a conflict of interest or a lack of confidentiality. This is because anger management therapists working in prisons have a duty to the institution of safety. This means if the client tells the therapist information that could threaten someone in the prisons life or confess details of a crime, they have committed they must report it no matter what. This is a weakness of the ethics as typically sessions with a therapist are suppose to be confidential and removing this right may be seen as unethical. This could also reduce the effectiveness of anger management programmes in prisons as if the clients are aware of this they will be far less trusting of their therapist and make less progress as a result
Conclude the evaluation on Anger Managment
In Conclusion there is evidence that anger management has the potential to provide offenders with insight into what causes their anger and more importantly, how they manage it. This may lead to improvement in all aspects of their lives.However, caution should be exercised for several reasons. The long-term effectiveness of anger management in reducing re-offending is not proven - there may not be a straightforward relationship between anger and offending, and in some cases, the techniques could even inadvertently create more skilled offenders.This shows that anger management is an effective form of treatment, but the overall positive impact depends on whether there are long term benefits or how likely it is for offenders to use anger management simply to reduce their prison time.
