Treatments for offenders: CBT Flashcards
What are the three stages of CBT?
- Cognitive preparation
- Skill acquisition
- Application and practice
What would happen in the first phase - cognitive preparation?
The therapist and the offender would reflect on past triggers of anger and whether they could have reacted differently.
What would happen in the second phase - skill acquisition?
Offenders learn behavioural techniques to help them cope such as ‘counting to ten when feeling stressed’.
What would happen in phase 3 - application and practise?
The offender demonstrates their new skills, they would reconstruct past events when the offender lost control. E.g. offender simulates queuing at a bar for a drink while the therapist provokes them (eg shoves them).
Who did a research study to show the effects of CBT anger management?
Ireland (2004)
What were the results of Ireland (2004)?
92% of the treatment group showed significant improvement on at least one measure.
What is a strength of CBT anger management?
Holbrook (1997)
Studied 26 male prisoners with a history of aggression and were given anger management treatment.
The results showed a reduction in scores for the desire for revenge after treatment.
This shows that anger management may have positive long term outcomes.
Who provided a counter argument for Holbrook (1997)?
Blackburn (1993)
Argued that anger management may help offenders control their conduct short term but not long term.
What is a weakness for anger management?
It may not be suitable for everyone. Anger management might even assist some prisoners to become more manipulative.
John Monckton was murdered in 2006 by Hanson who had received anger management and it is possible that this helped him to improve his ability to control situations and was able to convince the parol board to release him.
Other than the research support by Holbrook, what is a further strength of anger management?
It is an eclectic approach to offending. Anger management addresses different aspects of offending behaviour.
It’s an interdisciplinary approach that works on different levels:
Phase 1 = Cognitive
Phase 2 = Behavioural
Phase 3 = Social
How can anger management be linked with issues and debates?
Anger management may be seen as a form of social control.
Success depends on the offender’s ability to adopt the new forms of thinking and ways of behaving that the therapist deems acceptable.
This may be seen as forced compliance to the therapist’s way of seeing the world.
