Forensic Psychology, Sexual abuse and Help, Psychopathy

Question 1

Why should we treat offenders?

Answer 1

Reduce the risk of reoffending
- makes community safer, reduce cost, improves well-being and of family

Question 2

What is the Risk-Need-Responsivity Framework

Answer 2

Comprised of 3 parts:

Risk: The intensity of a treatment
- Intensity: How often you’re meeting for it, how in-depth you go, how sensitive the topics are

• The intensity should match the risk of reoffending
• We don’t want to give high intensity treatment to low risk offenders because it increases the likelihood of them reoffending due to observational learning

Need: The treatment should target the cause of the crime.
- we want to target the central 8
- we have limited time to prevent, so target the things that are actually the cause

Responsivity: Acknowledging the idea that different people learn in different ways, match the programme to the needs of offenders

Question 3

How do we assess how risky the offender is for better treatment?

Answer 3

• often we arent very good at assessing this, especially alone
• Do they have a long criminal history record?
• Lacking empathy is a big risk indicator.
• treating general empathy helps though.

We have a few frameworks:

Offender Risk: Measured using structured risk assessment tools, done by clinicians. - it’s static because its based on historic items. This sheet is also given to judges in court to give appropriate sentence

Need Principle:
- Treatment argets the central 8, factors that predict crime ‘ criminogenic needs’

treatment programmes tend to be consistent amongst different types of offending because the people share similar causes of crime

Question 4

What are the treatment targets of secual offenders?

Answer 4

• Sexual deviancy: People who have sexual attraction to minors
• Emotional Identification with children: kids get me, adults dont
• Antisocial Orientation: Ideas/ beliefs that are supportive of sexual offending. Rape myths.
• General self regulation difficulties: struggle to regulate impulsivity and emotion (problem with lymbic system/ pre-frontal cortex development and difficult temperment.

Question 5

What are some factors that statistically have no relationship with reoffending?

Answer 5

• Lack of victim empathy
• Denial or minimisation of offending (rather than focussing on the stopping of offending, they focus on how they can stop yourself from being in a position where theyre acussed of offending again.
• Lack of motivation for treatment
  ( if the treatment rogramme is designed in a way of addressing their needs then theyre more motivated)