Anger management

• What is anger management in dealing with offenders?

  • A therapeutic programme offered in prisons to identify triggers and allow offenders to deal with situations calmly and positively
  • Novaco (1975) suggested that cognitive factors trigger the emotional arousal that generally precedes acts of aggression
  • Becoming angry is reinforced the person's sense of control in that situation - anger management is a form of CBT where individuals are taught to recognise these triggers and develop cognitive techniques that help them bring about conflict resolution without the need for violence
• What is the first stage of anger management?

  1. Cognitive preparation: offender reflects on past experiences and identifies situations that provoke anger so they can recognise when an aggressive outburst may occur - therapist challenges their irrational thought patterns and aims to break these patterns and prevent them from happening in the future, by having the offender consider the negative consequences of their actions on others
• What is the second stage of anger management?

  2. Skills acquisition: offender learns new coping skills such as "stop and think" and counting to develop healthy cognitive responses to anger, relaxation techniques to help fight physiological responses to anger, and behavioural assertiveness training that helps them deal with issues constructively rather than violently to challenge behavioural responses to anger
• What is the third stage of anger management?

  3. Application practice: offenders practice their skills within a carefully controlled environment, role-playing scenarios that may have escalated feelings of anger/violence in the past

  • Requires commitment from offender and successful negotiations lead to positive reinforcement from the therapist, increasing the likelihood that this will become the offender's new response to previously anger-provoking situations
• What is the acronym for anger management?


  • Calm People Should Avoid Angry People
  • Cognitive preparation, skills acquisition, application practice
• What is one strength of anger management?

  • Benefits outweigh behaviour modification: by tackling the cognitive processes that trigger anger and ultimately offending behaviour, it gives offenders a new insight into the causes of their criminality and allows them to self-discover ways of managing themselves outside of prison
  • Behaviour modification only deals with surface-level behaviour and not the processes that drive these, suggesting anger management is more likely to lead to permanent behavioural change
• What is one limitation of anger management?

  • Long-term effects: Blackburn (1993) pointed out that whilst anger management has a noticeable effect on the conduct of offenders in the short term, there is very little evidence that it reduces recidivism in the long term
  • May be due to the fact that the application phase relies on role play that doesn't reflect all possible triggers of real-world situations
  • Suggests that anger management may not reduce reoffending in the end
• What is another limitation of anger management?

  • Individual differences: Howells et al. (2005) conducted an investigation with Australian offenders and found that participation in anger management had little overall impact compared to a control group who had no treatment
  • BUT offenders who showed intense levels of anger before the programme and those who showed 'treatment readiness' (open to change and motivated from the start) made significant progress
  • Shows anger management may only benefit those who fit a certain profile
• What is another limitation of anger management?

  • Expensive: require the services of highly trained specialists who are experienced in dealing with violent offenders - many prisons don't have the resources to fund such programmes
  • Success is also dependent on the commitment of those who participate and the therapy will likely face issues with unco-operative, apathetic prisoners
  • Suggests anger management may not be accessible or suitable for everyone, likely not to work