Criminal Psychology: Rehabilitating Offenders are there better methods to achieve this?

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Psychology         Criminal Psychology         Tom Seath

Criminal Psychology: Rehabilitating Offenders – are there better methods to achieve this?

The author intends to describe token economy programmes as a rehabilitation package, describe anger management as a therapy including CALM as a current model of anger management and finally conclude by comparing both economy and anger management programmes as they are used to treat offenders, in terms of the principles on which they are based, their effectiveness and impact upon recidivism.

Token Economy

The principles of learning have not only been applied in the laboratory but have also been applied in many real-life settings, such as classrooms, mental hospitals and prisons; the use of operant conditioning in such real-world settings is called behavioural modification (Ewan Williams 2010).

Many behaviour modification programmes rely on a technique called the token economy, in which desirable behaviour, such as co-operation and compliance, is reinforced by the use of tokens.  These tokens have no intrinsic value but can be changed for primary reinforcers, when used in prisons most of the programmes also involve negative reinforcement, the removal of something unpleasant, and punishment, the implementation of something unpleasant, in order to reduce undesirable behaviour such as non-compliance and aggression.  Tokens may be exchanged for privileges such as watching television or going into the exercise yard while a typical punishment would be isolation (Ewan Williams 2010).

Token economy programmes tend to have a direct, short term effect on specific behaviours, for example Hobbs and Holt (1976) recorded the effects of introducing a token economy to young delinquents across three small institutional units while the fourth unit acted as a control.  Tokens were given for behaviour such as obeying rules, doing chores properly, co-operative social interactions and appropriate behaviour when queuing for meals; extra positive reinforcers such as soft drinks, sweets, leisure activities, cigarettes and passes home were also used.  The programme showed a significant increase in the targeted behaviours compared to the group not involved in the programme.  Other studies showed that token reinforcement also works with adult prisoners (Ayllon & Millan, 1979) However Ross and Mackay (1976) reported deterioration in behaviour when such a programme was used with delinquent girls, but such results are unusual (Ewan Williams 2010).

Although these programmes are popular, especially in the US, not many of them have been evaluated in terms of the conduct of the offenders after release.  Moyes et al (1985) reported limited success with hospitalised behaviourally disordered males and females with a criminal history, after a year they had had fewer contacts with the police than a control group of similar patients, but after two years there was no difference (Ewan Williams 2010).

Anger Management or CALM

CALM (Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage it) is a cognitive-behavioural anger management intervention, the primary aims of the CALM programme are to reduce the intensity, frequency and duration of an offender’s experience of anger and other emotions which can contribute to potential offending behaviour; it has been specifically designed to meet the needs of male offenders in managing emotions associated with the expression of aggressive and anti-social behaviour.  The aim of the programme is to assist participants in reducing aggression through management of emotions, understand the factors that trigger anger and aggression, acquire skills to reduce the emotional and physiological levels of arousal, challenge thinking that potentially creates, sustains and escalates arousal, learn skills to resolve conflict effectively and plan how to deal with any potential relapse into former patterns of behaviour (Crown 2004).

The anger management programme module by module:

Module one includes primarily focusing on enhancing a prisoner's motivation to participate in the programme and to change their behaviour (Crown 2004).

Module two includes group members being introduced to the concept of physiological arousal and the relationship between arousal and performance. They are taught how to identify physiological changes that they experience when becoming angry and are provided with a range of arousal management techniques (Crown 2004).

Module three includes facilitators working with participants to understand how their irrational, hurtful and unhelpful thoughts contribute to their feelings and actions, participants learn to recognise irrational thinking, to argue against it and replace it with a more rational way of thinking (Crown 2004).

Module four includes participants learning a number of skills to enable them to communicate more effectively with others, even in response to any potential provocation (Crown 2004).

Module five includes providing a framework for applying the skills learned so far to other emotions which can lead to problematic or offending behaviour, these include jealousy, depression, anxiety, social threats and fear of losing control, ‘superman feelings' or feelings of unlimited power (Crown 2004).

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Module six requires participants to identify the situations which are the most high risk for them in the future in terms of a possible return to anger and aggression, facilitators then support participants in developing relapse prevention plans which incorporate skills learned on the programme; included in this module is preparation for what happens if they do relapse and exploration of ‘healthy' and ‘unhealthy' ways of coping following a relapse (Crown 2004).

Comparison

Both token economy programmes and forms of anger management including CALM, can have significant positive effects upon juvenile delinquents and/or adult criminals, however, we ...

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