Psychological

• PSYCHOANALYSIS

  Freud - Free Association

  • Patients encouraged to lie comfortably on couch and speak aloud any thoughts that may arise into their head
  • This way, repressed memories may slip out without thinking
  • Unburdening the unconscious
  • Treatment is lengthy - Freud saw his patients 4/5 times a week
  • Used hypnosis
• Aichorn

  Used Freud's ideas to treat young offenders
• Offenders with uncaring/absent parents

  Failed to develop a superego
• does it work?

  -

  
• Aichorn's approach

  Provided a loving and pleasant environment for the offenders instead of a prison like environment
• Only 44% of psychoanalysis patients treated for neurosis showed any improvement against 72% of patients treated by GPs
• If psychoanalysis doesn't fix neurosis

  It's not going to work for criminals
• Cost of psychoanalysis

  Never used on a large scale, one session costs £150 an hour
• Psychoanalysts are the ones that define behaviour as normal and abnormal
• Freud believed that homosexuality is abnormal
• BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION

  • Application of behaviourist approach to treatment
  • Therapy works on the principle that criminals should be trained/taught desirable behaviours and undesirable behaviours should be extinguished
  • Positive Reinforcement: behaviour more likely to occur to get a positive reward
  • Negative Reinforcement: behaviour more likely to occur to avoid a negative consequence.
• AVERSION THERAPY AND SEX OFFENDERS

  • offenders asked to think about unacceptable sexual fantasy until they are aroused, a strongly aversive stimulus is then administered, either an electric shock or vomiting through the use of an emetic drug - repeated until offender comes to associate the arousal with unpleasant stimulus.
  • Only in short term - if treatment doesn’t continue, it loses effectiveness
  • Used to ‘cure’ homosexuality - therefore breaching the individual rights and freedoms of individuals.
• OPERANT CONDITIONING AND TOKEN ECONOMY

  Punishments include tv in your cell being taken away for 42 days and 84 days of money earned could be stopped - 35 days for cellular confinement.

  
• Token economies

  
• Incentives and earned privileges in prison

  
• Effective?

  Buddy System = uses an adult volunteer to buddy with a young offender to offer continuous reinforcement of what is socially acceptable in the hope that they will be dissuaded from engaging in deviant or criminal behaviour again. ( Fo and O’Donnell ).

  Evidence suggests that token economies work in the short-term, but the improvements do not last once that criminal leaves prison ( Allyon and Milan, 1979 ).
• ANGER MANAGEMENT

  A form of CBT.

  It looks to change the way you view a situation by addressing faulty thinking.
• 3 stages of anger management

  1. Cognitive Preparation : phase requires offender to reflect on past experiences/consider pattern of anger, offender learns to identify those situations which act as triggers to anger and if it’s interpreted by the offender as irrational, therapist’s role is to make it clear that their way of thinking is irrational.
• 3 stages of management

  2. Skills Acquisition : offenders introduced to a range of techniques and kills to help them to eat with anger-provoking situations more rationally and effectively : positive self-talk, improved communication, methods of relaxation.
• 3 stages of anger management

  3. Application Practise : offenders given opportunity to practise skills within carefully monitored environment, role play involves therapist and offender re-enacting scenarios which may have escalated feelings of anger in the offender in the past.

  Requires commitment - they must see the scenario as real, requires bravery from therapist who’s job it is to wind up the offender for them to gain progress.
• Does it work?

  Feindler et al ( 1984 ) - led to improved self-control, better problem solving and reduced offending in young men.

  Ainsworth ( 2000 ) - only effective if the programme is managed correctly, given the appropriate resources and targets the right offenders, than whose crimes resulted form their lack of ability to manage their anger - it my not work for everyone!

  Howitt ( 2009 ) - it would not work when a crime is committed to achieve a pacific goal, rather than due to poor anger management.
• does it work?

  Ireland ( 2004 ) - compared two groups of offenders, one group took part in an anger management, completed 12 sessions , other, a non-treatment control. They were both interviewed, a behaviour checklist was completed by prison officers, and offenders were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire.

  92% in AMG showed improvement in one area

  48% in AMG showed improvement in self-report questionnaire and behaviour checklist.

  Control group did not improve at all.