Treatment for Offenders

Treatment for Offenders

1. Sentencing

   • Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out statutory principles and purposes of sentencing
     • Punishment and offenders, reduction of crime, reform and rehabilitation of offenders, protection of the public, making reparation by offenders to those affected by offences
       • but our criminal justice system is based on competing assumptions and principles

2. considerations

   • we need to understand why offence committed to identity ways to prevent crime and to identify appropriate penalties - aggravating factor (makes crime more serious) - mitigating factor (makes crime less serious)
   • Sentencing options - discharge, fine, community sentence, custodial sentence (short custodial or sentences over 12 months)

3. Psychology in law

   • analysing the risk posed and seeking to understand why the offence was committed creating a formulation - the formulation then informs the treatment plan - forensic psychs are scientist practitioners - their work informed by the evidence base
     • e.g risk assessment - based on decision theory (Hart and Logan 2011) - the risk behaviour is a choice intended to achieve a goal - might be made quickly or be based upon inaccurate info or made with little care and attention and may be a bad choice - but it is still a choice
       • 4 step process - 1. choice enters consciousness and id not dismissed. 2 - positive consequences of action considered 3. negative consequences viewed as acceptable 4. evaluated option of violence = feasible
         • this the aim of risk assessment is to understand the process of the decision - understand impeding and influencing factors - synthesising individual factors with evidence base

4. Desistence

   • Maruna - offending is a habitual pattern of behaviour which meeds a persons needs - changing habitual behaviour is not easy, particularly in the absence of alternatives - forensic psych need to assist people to develop alternative skills, develop a coherent prosiclal identity, first step = recognise the need to change, make commitment to change

5. Psychological treatment approaches

   • often we need to start by enhancing motivation to change behaviour - theoretical models of behaviour/behaviiour change - self determination theory, stages of change, readiness to change framework - treatment approaches - motivational interviewing

6. Motivational interviewing

   • Miller and Rollnick 2002 - a client centred, directive method for enhancing intrinsic motivation to change by exploring and resolving ambivalence - collaborate not confrontational - 'a way of being' with clients - autonomy not authority

7. Treatment of offending behaviour

   • legal system rooted in classical theory (1700s) - based on notion that we exercise free will and we act in a rational manner - psychological theory presented challenges to assumptions of classical theory
   • for about 150 years there had been optimism towards rehabilitating offenders - until 70s when Martinson, Brody and Von Hirsch paper s- 'nothing works'
     • many papers judged as failures were simply starved as funds, measures of recidivism used in only 138/231 papers discussed etc.
       • medical models alone don't work - have to target other factors - vocational programmes need genuine outcomes - just focusing on punishment won't work
   • allocation according to risk level, risk factors as targets for change, responsively, multiple target addressed, based on a conceptual model of criminal behaviour, treatment integrity
     • RNR model - target resources at the specific criminogenic needs, for those presenting highest risk, in ways that are most effective
       • in practice - sex offender treatment