Rehabillitation Of Offenders Flashcards
What did Hood (1996) find about the relationship between serous crime and capital punishment?
No relationship across different nations
Why has research assessing the effectiveness of reducing crime been difficult?
Research designs have been inadequate.
Publication bias
Bad operational definitions of recidivism
What are some general research findings on treatment?
Treatment, defined in various ways, tends to have a positive effect among convicted offenders.
The mean effect across interventions is small, but it includes those that are weak or ineffective.
There is great variability in treatments but we have found no magic bullet yet.
What are ineffective approaches?
Vocational training without good prospects for real jobs.
Scared-straight programmes.
Wilderness/outdoor challenges programs
What are the interventions that target risk factors?
Well-designed, high intensity, community based interventions are most effective, implementation is also important.
Cognitive-behavioural programs that focus on risk factors for criminal recidivism tend to be most effective.
These involve: interpersonal skills training, behavioural techniques such as modelling, graduated practice and role-playing, cognitive skills training, structured individual counselling for problem solving training.
What is Cognitive and Behavioural treatment for offenders?
This treatment is based on the concept that offenders are shaped by their environment and that they have learned the maladaptive behaviours and failed to learn cognitive and behavioural skills for proper functioning in society.
The treatment involves problem-solving training, social-skills training, and pro-social modelling.
Why is Cognitive and Behavioural treatments considered most effective?
They focus on the offenders behaviour and this is very important when it comes to reducing recidivism.
What are the techniques involved in Cognitive-Behavioural treatment?
Increasing offenders insights into their actions.
Model new ways of thinking and acting: including recognising series of events and the resulting emotions, techniques for self–assessment, practise new behaviours through role-play.
Why do we treat offenders?
1) Safeguard prisoners’ health and dignity
2) To reduce long term detrimental effects on society, we hope they will stop offending
3) To provide further perception of justice. Not every crime deserves severe punishment.
What is the Rehabilitation Theory by Ward, Mann and Gannon, 2007?
This is a theory that states what needs to be included to make a good theory of rehabilitation. More work does need to be done but it does include some outlines.
What are the outlines for making a good offender rehabilitation theory according to the Rehabilitation theory?
1) Specify the aims of therapy
2) Justify the aims based on assumptions about cause and related factors (etiology)
3) Identify clinical targets
4) Outline treatment based on etiology and goals. Specify most suitable type of treatment, address motivation and educate therapist about best attitude to have.
What is the Good Lives Model-Comprehensive (GLM) by Ward and Gannon, 2006?
This is a comprehensive and systematic approach to rehabilitating sexual offenders. There are three levels or components to this model.
- Set of general/assumptions specifying values regarding rehabilitation and the overall aims to strive for.
- Implications of assumptions for understanding and explaining offending and its functions.
- Treatment implications of focusing on goals/good, self-regulation strategies, and ecological factors.
What is the first level of the GLM model?
This is the idea that humans have goals to seek out primary goods. Primary goods are things that may increase their psychological well-being (Ward, Mann and Gannon, 2007). Examples of these are friendship (including intimate), spirituality/meaning, happiness, food, knowledge.
To acquire the primary goods there are instrumental/secondary goods that can provide means of securing primary goods. (e.g. money, work)
The idea is that sexual offending is a socially unacceptable attempt at obtaining primary goods.
When looking at offender rehabilitation, what are some things to keep in mind?
We do not assume whether the human is being ethical or unethical, as humans are pursuing the goods, not a morally good outcome.
Rehabilitation has many values, including what is best for offender, society and the development of knowledge about the problem.
Personal identity is important. We have to encourage offenders to develop a sense of who they are and what it means to them to have a good life and provide them with the opportunity to exercise these in order to have a more meaningful life.
Psychological well-being is important and primary goods need too be accessible and the conditions to acquire these goods should be nutured.
What is the second level of GLM?
This is the etiological assumptions.
Biological, ecological niche and neuropsychological are the causal variables that when interacting can cause sexual abuse.
This works by biological and ecological niche factors (e.g. brain development and contextual situations) impacting the neuropsychological systems (emotion, perception, memory, action selection and control systems) to cause various problems that can set the context for and facilitate abuse.
These problems might include: empathy deficits, social difficulties, cognitive distortion, deviant sexual arousal.
These all combined can create a cycle that escalates and/or maintains sexual deviance.
