REHABILITATION IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

This paper first appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of the 'Skeptical Intelligencer', pp 13-14.

The focus of my 'From the ASKE Chair' article in the previous issue of the Intelligencer was remorse as experienced or exhibited by people convicted of criminal offences, with some reference to regret, retribution and recompense, and mentioning, on the way, rehabilitation and reoffending (or recidivism). This time I'd like to say a little more about rehabilitation.

Not all sentences given by the criminal courts have rehabilitation as a goal but, along with deterrence, removal of the opportunity to reoffend (albeit usually temporary). and the desire of victims of crime and society at large for offenders to be punished accordingly, the oft-stated aim of sending an offender to prison is rehabilitation. This implies that while they are confined, efforts are made to assist the convicted person to act in a prosocial and responsible manner and desist from reoffending when they are back in the community.

Education and occupational skills training are examples of such activities, and these make sense, as acquiring paid work can itself deter recidivism (note 1). But there are also a range of 'treatments' that inmates may undertake with prison staff that more directly address offending behaviour (note 2; many of these are also available in the community). These are mainly conducted in groups and are largely based on the principles of cognitive behaviour therapy. Problems targeted include drug and alcohol abuse, violence (both general and domestic), sexual offending, and extremism, as well as more general areas related to offending (e.g. problem solving, 'thinking skills', and healthy relationships).

I shall not attempt to review research on outcomes here. What research there is on offender behaviour programmes in prison suggests that they do help to reduce reconviction rates following release (note 3). There are some obvious problems, though, with this kind of research-e.g. biases in the selection of candidates for treatment and the fact that reoffending rates are likely to be higher than reconviction rates, since the former include unreported, undetected and unsolved crimes.

One area of offender treatment that has so far failed to convincingly demonstrate its effectiveness is that undertaken by those convicted of sexual crimes. In June 2017 the UK Ministry of Justice published an evaluation of the Core Sex Offender Treatment Programme, which concluded that it was ineffective and even might have led to increased offending post-discharge (note 4). The programme was replaced by two new courses, Horizon and Kaisden, that target areas of concern which were not addressed in the original programmes; in addition, offenders who maintain their innocence are allowed to undertake the courses (see article above).

One difficulty with running offender behaviour courses in prison is that the environment in which the participants are contained is not only drastically different to normal life but is itself highly toxic and not conducive to prosocial behaviour and mental wellbeing. Another is that prisoners on their release usually find themselves in the same environment in which they committed their offence, with all its stresses and inducements to reoffend.

I have previously illustrated the first of these point (note 4) with reference to an inmate, a man in his 30s, who was serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend and who had an upcoming parole board hearing which would consider his transfer to open prison. The decision of the prison psychologist was that before his transfer could be considered, he should undergo a Healthy Relationships Programme with other inmates in the prison, run by her and her colleague.

In my independent psychologist's report I queried the wisdom of this, since the man had already undertaken numerous offender treatment courses which, although supposedly addressing different issues, he found to be very repetitive in their content. But more than this, I wondered whether it would not be more sensible if he undertook the proposed course when he was in an environment, such as an open prison, which offered him more opportunity to have friendships and more closer relationships? Surely his learning about how to have healthy relationships would be considerably enhanced in such circumstances-as it is for any of us in ordinary life? (See note 5). As it was, my arguments coincided with those of the lay member of this man's parole board but to no avail (note 6).

The line of thinking that I have pursued here is by no means idiosyncratic and there is a school of thought that questions the idea that prisons, as they presently stand, are fit places to even attempt to rehabilitate offenders by treatment programmes. The metaphor we might use is that of a garage. Your car develops problems (misbehaves itself) and has to be taken off the road and placed in a garage where expert mechanics put it right and send it off, roadworthy once more. But a prison can't approach this ideal if it itself is psychologically damaging to those incarcerated there.

This point was made in two years ago by Sir Martin Narey, former Director General of the Prison Service. He maintained that:

Research to establish a causal link between rehabilitation and reduced reoffending is lacking and short courses cannot fix problems caused by difficult childhoods. Instead, the best the prison estate can offer prisoners is an environment where they are treated with 'decency and dignity. Decent prisons in which prisoners are respected seem to provide a foundation for prisoner self-growth. Indecent, unsafe prisons allow no such growth and further damage those who have to survive there (note 7).

But perhaps the ideal answer is to have decent prisons with good education and training opportunities and evidence-based rehabilitation programmes.

Notes

1. According to a recent government publication, a third of businesses are now experiencing recruitment problems, while currently only 17% of ex-offenders manage to get a job within a year of release. Hence there is interest on all sides in recruiting released offenders, who are up to 9% less likely to reoffend if they obtain paid employment.
2. https://tinyurl.com/2w56tdf5.
3. See, for example: https://tinyurl.com/2yvw7a8d.
4. See 'From the ASKE Chair', Skeptical Intelligencer, Vol 22, Summer 2018: https://tinyurl.com/59j7yb65.
5. You may be thinking that the last relationship this man had had was with his victim. Not so. In one of the prisons in which he had been incarcerated he had pursued a clandestine relationship with a female member of staff-a psychologist in fact. This was taken as a black mark against his character, to be addressed by further rehabilitative work.
6. The Healthy Relationships Programme was a new initiative and had yet to have Home Office approval. Cynically, but realistically, I feel confident in saying that the main reason for the recommendation that the inmate should undergo this is that the prison psychologist and her colleague had recently attended a training course in 'delivering' the programme.
7. https://tinyurl.com/xxxsa5k8.