Contents
1. Historical Background
- Extensive debate over “what works” in offender rehabilitation
- Early literature reviews did not present favourable conclusions regarding the effectiveness of correctional interventions
- Martinson presented the “nothing works” conclusion in his paper that evaluated 231 primary research studies – even though he later retracted his opinion.
In Summary: since the 70s, the meta-analytic approach has become more common.
2. Why Meta-Analysis?
- Meta-Analysis: statistical aggregation of the results derived from many independent studies in order to integrate the findings
- Effect Size: (the primary unit) this reflects the degree to which the comparison and treatment groups differ on a particular measure – the size of the effect.
- Positive Effect Size: reduced recidivism
- Negative Effect Size: increased recidivism
Examples (not real, except boot camps):
- Cognitive-behaviour treatment has an effect size of +0.20 – small reduction in recidivism.
- Relapse prevention therapy has an effect size of +0.60 – large reduction in recidivism.
- Boot camps as compared to nothing have an effect size of -0.2 – small increase in recidivism.
- Long prison sentences have an effect size of -0.60 – large increase in recidivism.
3. What Works in Offender Treatment
We’re interested in the impact of offender treatment and punishment strategies.
3.1 Effectiveness of Punishment-Based Strategies
Get Tough Strategies
Historically, CJS used “Get Tough” strategies to deal with offenders; these strategies vary in degree of severity from incarceration to intermediate sanctions (e.g. house arrest, curfews, and restitution), where the objective is to reduce recidivism through specific and general deterrence. (See video below for an example of a Scared Straight program - language is NSFW).
Results: “Get Tough” strategies are not effective only if our goal is to reduce recidivism.
Research – Gendreau et al.: conducted a meta-analysis of several strategies and found that the effect sizes of all of them were small and most of them increased recidivism.
5 Reasons Why Punishment doesn’t work in the CJS
Punishment is defined as a negative consequence to a behaviour that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour from re-offending. Because we know that punishment can work, why doesn’t it? Here are 5 reasons (PIINC):
- Person Variables: many people (e.g. psychopaths) don’t learn via conditioning very well so punishment is less effective anyways.
- Intensity: high intensity punishment can stop behaviour but it’s not ethical.
- Immediacy: punishment must immediately follow the bad behaviour. (Hard to do in CJS – some people don’t get caught and even if they are caught immediately, they have to be tried.)
- No Escape: escape routes (from punishment) must be blocked in order for punishment to be effective.
- Consistency: punishment needs to be given every time the target behaviour occurs until it’s gone. (Hard to do in CJS – inconsistent sentences and crimes often go unpunished.)
Why do we keep punishing them?
- Public wants it, regardless of the empirical.
- Rehabilitation is viewed as soft and ineffective and it takes time to revamp current strategies.
- Some people don’t care about rehabilitation.
3.2 Principles of Effective Correctional Treatment (ECT)
RNR Strategy
- Risk Principle: correctional interventions should target offenders who are at high risk to reoffend (not low risk offenders).
- Need Principle: interventions should target criminogenic needs (they should be dynamic risk factors that when changed, are associated with changes in the probability of recidivism)
- Criminogenic Needs: can be changed through intervention – the Big Four...
Antisocial attitudes;
Antisocial personality;
History of antisocial behaviour; and
Antisocial peers – targeting these needs will have a great impact on the probability of recidivism. - Non-Criminogenic Needs: though the offender needs to improve in these areas, they do not affect the probability of recidivism.
Increasing self-esteem;
Focusing on vague emotional/personal problems;
Increasing cohesiveness of antisocial peer groups; and
Neighbourhood-wide improvements without touching the needs to higher risk individuals, etc.
- Responsivity Principle: refers to delivering treatment programs in a style and mode that is matched to the ability and learning style of the offender and their personality.
- General Responsivity: (learning) we have to deliver the intervention in a way that we know the offender will respond to – which means that we need to use cognitive-behavioural approaches.
- Specific Responsivity: (personality) we have to deliver the intervention in a way that acknowledges the individual differences that exist in an individual, which includes their motivation, personality and demographics.
Empirical Evidence for RNR Principles
The following summarizes the empirical evidence we’ve collected:
- Responsivity: results show that meeting responsivity in your treatment program is the most effective way to reduce rates of recidivism (with need and risk following shortly after).
- RNRs: incorporating more of a combination of the RNRs increases the success of the treatment program; not including the RNRs results in an increase in recidivism rates.
- Setting: programs offered in the community are better than in residential areas (i.e. offender facility).
- Targets: targeting criminogenic has better results than targeting non-criminogenic needs.
- Women Offenders: some criminologists don’t believe in gender-neutral treatment programs.
- Staff: must be motivated and well-trained.
3.3 Effective Correctional Workers
Correctional Workers should have the following characteristics to be effective:
- Relationships: Must be able to establish high quality relationships with offenders.
- Modeling: Must effectively demonstrate anti-criminal expressions.
- Reinforcement: Must approve of offender’s anti-criminal expressions.
- Punishment: must disapprove of the offender’s pro-criminal expressions
- Authority: must make appropriate use of their authority.
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