So we have discussed a wide range of reasons why people may display offending behaviour,
but what can we actually do about it, can we actually reduce offending in society?
In this final forensic video we are going to look at 4 different ways of dealing with
offending behaviour. Custodial sentencing, behaviour modification, anger management and
restorative justice.
Our first way of dealing with offenders is the first thing you would think of, putting
them in prison or in a secure facility like a young offenders institute or perhaps for
some criminals a psychiatric hospital.
There are a few reasons we may want to lock criminals away, firstly the punishment deter
crimes. Either stopping individual from committing more crimes when they get out, or as an example
to stop other members of society committing crimes.
A second reason is to protect society, the criminal may be violent or could steal property,
by locking them away they cant repeat that behaviour on wider society.
The third is probably what most people think the aim of prison is, simply a punishment,
a retribution for the harm they caused to their victim or society as a whole.
And finally rehabilitation, an attempt to change the criminal while in prison, this
may be by learning new non criminal skills they can use for work, or changing their behavioural
responses.
So those are the aims of custodial sentences, but we also need to be able to discuss some
of the psychological effects.
As you can imagine prison is a frightening environment, it's easy to feel helpless and
stressed. This can lead to depression, and this is very evident with the high levels
of selfharm and suicide we see in the prison popluation.
Institutionalisation is when we adopt the rules and regulations of an institution, for
example if someone is in a prison for so long, when they are outside of that institution
we struggle to adapt to normal life, perhaps feeling more comfortable back in the institution.
Deindividuation is the sense of losing our individual identity, we feel so much part
of the group that we are more likely to copy the group's actions, even violent actions.
This is one explanation for why a peaceful protest can turn into a riot. Prisons actually
increase the sense of deindividuation by making all prisoners wear the same uniform.
And a final concept we need to know is recidivism, This term just means when after an offender
is released, if they then go on to commit another crime. There are a range of reasons
people may offend again, perhaps they have become institutionalised and cant cope in
the outside world, maybe they have developed their pro-criminal attitudes and skills while
inside. But also life is difficult for ex prisoners, they may struggle to find work,
and both homelessness and drug addiction are common in ex prisoners and risk factors.
Recidivism is a very big problem in the UK, large study by the ministry of justice followed
thousands of prisoners over 18 years, 77% of those ex inmates eventually went on to
reoffend.
Using that study as an evaluation, it was published in 2020, and that 77% figure suggests
that custodial sentences fail both on the aim of deterrence, fear of another prison
sentence didn't stop them from reoffending. And the aim of reforming, they didnt stop
their offending behaviour. It only incapacitated them for the time they were in prison, providing
pretty limited protection to the public.
But there is an interesting aspect of the data, the reoffending rates for short sentences
of less than 6 months were much higher at 84.9% than for prisoners who had sentences
of 4 years or more at 32.2%, so perhaps it could be that short sentences are not long
enough to deter or reform prisoners.
But after learning about differential association, we could consider custodial sentencing to
be in theory completely counterproductive, we could just be reinforcing pro criminal
attitudes by putting lots of people with procrimal attitudes together, giving them the opportunity
to share criminal skills.
And a separate point is the massive expense of the prison system, the figure for locking
up a single prisoner in 2020 is £42,000 a year. With recidivism rates so high, and prisoners
likely to return soon after being released. it really should be questioned if there are
more effective and less costly ways of reducing crime.
But in custodial sentences favour, it has the support of the public. It's politically
popular to use custodial sentences, likely because it's seen as a suitable punishment
or effectively appropriate vengeance for the crimes committed. Any other option is often
criticised as a “soft” option, just not punishing enough. I mean if they did the crime
they should do the time?
Behaviour Modification
This way of dealing with offending behaviour is based on learning theory. As you likely
remember behaviourists think all behaviours have been learnt through interaction with
the environment. That includes offending behaviour, so behaviour modification attempts to use
the same process to give the criminal non offending behaviour.
Operant conditioning shows how behaviour can be modified with the use of reinforcement
and punishment. Prisons who run token economy systems use these principles to modify behaviour.
It works like this, certain behaviors that the prison guards want to change are targeted,
meaning the behaviors you want are clearly defined. so perhaps its cleaning up after
yourself in the prison canteen or obeying the guards orders immediately.
If the prisoner demonstrates the target behaviour they are given a token. This token acts as
a secondary reinforcer, meaning it can be traded later on for what the prisoner really
wants. This could be treated from the prison shop or saved up for a larger reward.
The prisoner learns that demonstrating positive behaviour is rewarding, and they become conditioned
into repeating that behaviour.
Punishment can be used, so if the prisoner shows bad behaviour they can have tokens taken
off them to discourage the bad behaviour, in operant conditioning language this is negative
punishment.
There is research that shows token economies can be effective, Hobbs and Holt ran a token
economy system with most of the criminals in a young offenders institution. They lived
in four different buildings and one group of prisoners acted as a control group and
didn’t take part. The researchers found the staff's assessment of behaviour showed
a significant improvement in the offenders who took part in the token economy scheme.
But the token economy system is pretty limited, it may work in reducing behavioural problems
while they are in a controlled setting like a prison, but when the prisoners are released,
without the reward system in place, behaviour is likely to revert back to criminal behaviour.
That's because back in their normal lives criminals will have the same reward system
that led them to offend in the first place. So it’s not on its own going to reduce recidivism.
That being said prisons are places where criminal activity takes place, and if token economies
can make prisons easier to manage for the guards it's a useful technique. Also once
the target behaviours have been set up it only requires the guards to be consistent
in giving out the rewards, so no highly trained staff are needed, and it's not an expensive
system to maintain.
Anger Management
This approach takes a cognitive perspective to offending behaviour, it assumes criminal
violence is due to emotional responses, these come from irrational thoughts. The logic is,
if the prisoners can learn to control their thoughts in stressful situations, and ultimately
their emotions then they won't be violent when they are released.
There are three stages of anger management programs we need to know.
The first is the cognitive preparation stage, this is when the offender learns how to reflect
on their own thoughts and find what triggers their aggression. The psychologist will do
this by getting the offender to consider examples from their lives when they have lost control.
The second stage is skills acquisition. The psychologist will teach techniques like relaxation
exercises, or communication skills that the offender can use when trying to control their
anger. The hope is the offender can use these skills to avoid conflict in the future.
The third stage is application practice. This is a role play, the therapist will actually
try to put the offender in a stressful position that would in the past have led to an aggressive
outburst. The offender needs to take all the skills they have developed to stay calm and
not react emotionally.
Ireland conducted a study into the effectiveness of an anger management program. The participants
and control group completed self assessment questionnaires and their behaviour was recorded
by staff on a checklist. After receiving the intervention 48% of the experimental group
showed an improvement on both measures, with no improvement in the control group. Intrestliblgy
the biggest improvement in behaviour was in the prisoners identified as the most aggressive.
Often studies like Ireland will use self report measures, there are a range of problems, but
one of the main issues is a desire to give the best impression of yourself as possible,
social desirability bias. This may have been a big problem in the second self report measure,
many of the prisoners may have been trying to get early release, and wanted to show they
had engaged in an anger management program and seen improvement so were no longer a danger.
But if they do work, a positive of anger management programs is these techniques are good life
skills. Offenders can use them to improve their personal relationships and maybe even
improve their relationships with people at work and retain employment.
Restorative Justice
Rehabilitation is the focus of restorative justice, the aim is by getting the offender
to understand the harm they have caused to their victim and they will not want to repeat
their crimes in the future.
There is a hope that in some way that the harm that the offender caused to the victim
can be in some way “restored”, this may be repairing the emotional harm or financial
harm. An aspect of this is reconciliation, it may be a cash payment, or performing some
sort of act, even something as small as sitting and listening to the victims experience.
There doesn't always have to be a meeting between the offender and victim, letters could
be used instead, it's very likely that they will get the chance to talk to each other
face to face. The meeting is supervised by a highly trained mediator, the tone of the
meeting is collaboration, and the victim is given the chance to explain their experience
and the harm that was caused to them. The offender can explain their story, but is encouraged
to take responsibility for their actions.
This acceptance of responsibility can take the form of reparations, maybe a cash payment
or completing community service.
The effectiveness of three restorative justice schemes were assessed by the ministry of justice.
Three of the findings were, firstly a 14% reduction in reoffending by the criminals
who took part, secondly 2 62% of the victims who took part felt better for taking part
in the experience, compared to only 2% who felt worse. And third that the restorative
justice is cost effective, because of the reduction in reoffending, every £1 spent
on restorative justice led to £8 being saved from the prison system.
But there are limitations, it not only depends on the offender wanting to take part, but
also the willingness of the victim. Many victims may not accept the process as they may feel
the offender would just play along to try to avoid a custodial sentence.
I have dealt with all the ways of dealing with offending behaviour in one video. I think
it's most likely if a long essay question comes up in this area you will be able to
include a range of techniques, or if they ask about just one it will be a short essay
question.
But it is possible that you could be asked to write a longer essay about just one, for
that you may want more evaluations than I’ve given you so far. I think the best route for
evaluation then is to bring in the other ways of dealing with offending behaviour as comparisons.
So for example, there is evidence that other forms of dealing with offending behaviour
are effective, mention that evidence and suggest it as an alternative, or mention that as doing
one technique doesn't stop you from doing the others, maybe the best option is to use
a holistic combined approach.
We can compare the effects of each approach, due to high reoffending rates custodial sentences
don't seem to have long term behavioural change along with behaviour modification. But anger
management and restorative justice do have longer term positive effects on personal relationships
and lower reoffending rates, but both these require trained staff that there may not be
funding available for.
Finally there is the practical point that many members of society want offenders to
face long custodial sentences, the more unpleasant the better the punishment. Seeing offenders
given treats or shorter sentences for taking part in therapeutic programs as unacceptable.
The reality is prison policy is made by politicians whose focus is public opinion, not psychologists.
Here is a real forensic exam question on Eysenck’s theory of the criminal.
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