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Chapter 11

Chapter 11. Correctional Programs. Correctional Programs. Key Issues: Fairness of punishment by deprivation Efficiency of teaching productive life skills Failures get more attention than success System currently designed to punish cheaply Little effort to cut recidivism.

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Chapter 11

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  1. Chapter 11 Correctional Programs

  2. Correctional Programs Key Issues: • Fairness of punishment by deprivation • Efficiency of teaching productive life skills • Failures get more attention than success • System currently designed to punish cheaply • Little effort to cut recidivism

  3. Habilitative Services • Provide basic skills that most acquire in normal socialization • Literacy, interview and job skills, basic life managemnt (budgets, parenting) • Academic: literacy and GED most common • Job skills best at cutting recidivism • Recreation, religion also important, old

  4. Academic Programs • Clearly correlated with low recidivism • Promote a self-image that discourages crime • Self-discipline and investment in society • Also attracts those least likely to recidivate? • “Frills” important for most hardened • Violates principle of least eligibility

  5. Vocational Training • Most likely to reduce recidivism if it leads to good jobs after release • Prisons often define maintenance chores as “vocational training” • Companies reluctant to get involved without government assistance • Values of administrators, work supervisors, inmates and companies differ

  6. Life Skills • Healthy interpersonal communication • Emotional and stress management • Managing money • Education may also be included • Thought patterns are at root of behavior, self esteem a symptom

  7. Treatment Programs • 3% reduction in recidivism makes any program cost-effective • Responsibility model dominant for economic, political reasons • Stresses accountability for one’s choices • Confrontational style • Para-professional staff

  8. Challenges to Treatment • Lack of quality programs • Lack of custodial support for participation • Fear, and hostility of inmate culture • Inmate resistance to self-examination, disclosure and personal change • Denial typical of compulsive, addictive behaviors

  9. Compulsive Behaviors • Repeated despite expectation of adverse consequences • Relieves fear and brings pleasure • Especially in addicts, sex offenders • Craving/compulsion is experienced at the survival level even though it is actually a threat to survival • Denial, thinking errors pose special challenges

  10. Approaches to Treatment • Basic treatment amenability • Readiness of inmate to change, benefit from programming • Differential intervention strategies • Addresses unique issuesof offender, offenses

  11. Treatment Facts • Drug/alcohol treatment most common • Sex-offender treatment most needed • Self help and other groups most common • 20% of those needing treatment actually get it in prison, most occurs in community • Parolees pay for own treatment • Probation often helps fund treatment

  12. Cognitive Therapy • Most effective in cutting recidivism since 1980s • Focuses on logic of conscious choice making • Rational control of emotions stressed • Changes false beliefs that lead to bad choices • Confronts thinking errors such as minimizing, rationalizing, playing the victim, criminal pride • Compatible with reliance on group sessions

  13. Therapeutic Discipline • Keep busy to avoid self-pity, frustration • Repeatedly show links between choices, actions and outcomes • Keep focus on problem behavior • Have a minimum of rules • Encourage new behaviors • Reward all positive choices

  14. Themes of Successful Programs • Keep client focused on choices, alternatives • Challenge thinking errors, victim stancing • Encourage new approaches to problem solving, decision-making, self-disclosure • Reward good behavior, honesty • Prison environment discourages these

  15. Types of Therapies • Individual counseling • Group counseling (led by professional) • Most common for financial, theoretical reasons • 12-step groups (led by participants) • Specialized treatment programs • Substance abusers • Sex offenders • Polygraphs and plethysmographs

  16. 12 Step Groups • Based on Alcoholics Anonymous (1939) • Spiritual basis, avoids specific religions • Promote self-esteem by focusing attention on the ability to control a problem behavior • Used for addiction, sex offenses, wide range of problem (compulsive) behaviors • No cost – volunteer led • Easy to find in community

  17. The Relapse Cycle • Preparation: seemingly unimportant decisions (SUDs), stress • Relapse: • Fantasy (sex offenders) • Use (substance offenders) • Identify triggers and other early signs • Stop cycle early to control compulsive behavior

  18. Sex Offender Control • Re-offense rate debated • Overestimated by politicians, media, public • Chemical castration (Depo-Provera) • Some European studies supportive • Mixed results in many studies • Civil commitment following imprisonment • Upheld by Kansas v. Crane (2002)

  19. Treatment and Power • Treatment requires offenders to respect selves and others, assert own needs • Punishment and tradition require inmates to be powerless, dependent • Thus, the contradiction between reintegration and retribution

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