Psychological positivism - Theory in action

Crime

What is crime?

  • Crime is purposeful behaviour that is a response to certain felt needs

Why does crime occur?

  • Because the personality controls motivation and all aspects of human behaviour, any disturbance of the mental processes affecting personality will result in a disturbance of behaviour

What is the solution to crime?

  • Early detection of behaviour symptoms of psychological problems that may be predictive of future criminal behaviour

  • Therapeutic intervention and treatment of individuals identified with a psychological disorder to correct the faulty thought process or minimise its impact on behaviour

Behaviour predictors of future criminality

Static risk

  • Family factors

    • Parental involvement in criminal activity

    • Complications during pregnancy

  • Child factors

    • Age of onset delinquency

    • Age of onset alcohol and drug use

Dynamic risk

  • Family factors

    • Parental mental health

    • Parental management

    • Family structure

    • Adverse family environment

  • Child factors

    • Lack of self control

    • Developmental delay

    • Aggression

    • School-related problems —truancy

    • Alcohol and drugs

    • Experiences of abuse and maltreatment

Classical conditioning Theory in action

  • Aversion therapy — used to eliminate links between stimuli and problematic behaviour

    • Alcoholics

    • Sex offenders

  • BUT — ethical issues and workarounds

Operant conditioning

  • Can convert more easily into treatment and intervention

  • Less resource-intensive than psychoanalysis

  • If criminal behaviour is learned then it can be unlearned

  • Main critique: In operant learning theory, behaviour is mostly determined ny external factors, thus there is no space for human agency or choice

Operant conditioning in action

  • Earn/lose tokens for behaviour

  • Can exchange tokens for desirable items

  • Has been shown to be effective at reducing inmate misconduct

  • BUT — artificial

Social learning theory

  • Akers’ version — an integration of Sutherland’s differential association and behavioural principles of conditioning and reinforcement

  • SLT is a general social-psychological theory

    • Gives an explanation of the full range criminal behaviour

    • Proposes that criminal and delinquent behaviour is obtained and maintained through association, reinforcement, definitions, imitation and other learning processes

Oregon social learning Center

  • Adolescent transition program (ATP)

    • Intervention with at-risk youth

    • Targeted disciplinary and socialisation skills in parent-focused and parent-teen groups

  • Findings:

    • Improvements in parenting skills

    • Reductions in antisocial behaviour

    • BUT — where older delinquents were included, increased deviant behaviour among the younger people was observed

Multi-dimensional treatment foster care

  • Participants were frequent and serious young offenders

  • Randomly assigned

  • Evaluation — treatment group had significantly lower levels of self-reported and official delinquency than the control group, up to 3 years later

Linking the interests of families and teachers (LIFT)

  • Target high-risk area of a community

  • Universal strategy — all 1st and 5th graders, parents and teachers

  • Based on theoretical principle of reinforcement (SLT)

  • Focused on modifying ways youths interacted with peers, siblings and parents, teachers and classmates

Seattle social development research group

  • Social development model (SDM) — social learning and social bonding

    • Strengthens social attachment and commitment, positive reinforcement, modelling and learning pro-social attitudes and skills

    • Avoids learning delinquent pattens

  • Findings:

    • Positive findings at 5th grade, at aged 18 and 21

    • Aged 21: significantly less likely to be involved in a high variety of crimes, solid illegal drugs or have official life-time court record

Summary

  • Mental illness is often linked to offenders and offending behaviour. While a relationship may be there, it does not appear that having a serious mental disorder alone causes crime.

  • Rehabilitation programmes based on psychoanalysis are not effective or efficient, but some Freudian concepts are relevant and used.

  • Operant conditioning in prisons may be effective, but may be unlikely to have long-term benefits

  • Aversion therapy has serious ethical considerations and is not
    generally effective

  • There are many preventive/developmental programmes based upon Social Learning Theory


Cognitive psychology

  • Thoughts, more than the initial action, will impact how a person responds

  • Cognitive psychologists focus on 2 broad areas:

    • Content of a person’s though — what is though

    • General thought structures — how a person thinks

  • Moral education is now a compnent in many rehabilitation programmes

    • Offenders learn to thing about issues such as moral dilemmas in a more complex manner

  • Other examples of cognitive structure include self-control, ability to empathise, anticipate consequences of behaviour, recognise and control anger

Cognitive content

  • What people think

  • Focus on rationalisations or denials

  • Offenders/delinquents are more likely to express such thoughts than law abiding citizens (Maahs, 2012)

  • BUT question over causation and time ordering

  • Regardless — these reduce the guilt of the offender (to the offender)

Techniques of neutralisation:

  • Denial of responsibility

  • Denial of injury

  • Denial of the victim

  • Condemnation of the condemners

  • Appeal to higher loyalties

Responding to offending behaviour

  • Interventions can range from counselling to behaviour modification therapy

  • Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) programmes

  • 2 main components

    • Cognitive skills training

    • Cognitive restructuring

  • Research suggests CBT programmes can have positive results

Cognitive behavioural programmes

  • Several programmes put in place during the crime reduction programme (1999-2002)

    • Think first, reasoning and rehabilitation, enhanced thinking skills, addressing substance-related offending, priestly one-to-one

  • Some unimpressive results

    • 54% vs 60% for males

    • 56% vs 50% for females!

    • Non-completers were much higher – 68% males and 77% females


      Tilley (2012)

Thinking skills programme -- accredited programme

  • The TSP is designed to reduce general reoffending by supporting improvements in 4 ways

    1. Developing thinking skills

    2. Applying these skills to managing personal risk factors

    3. Applying thinking skills to developing personally relevant protective factors

    4. Applying thinking skills to setting pro-social goals that support relapse prevention

Consists of 19 sessions (15 groups and 4 individuals) at 38 contact hours

Brinn et al., 2023

Sex offender treatment programmes (SOTP)

  • Core SOTP was a CB psychological intervention designed for imprisoned men who had committed sexual offences

  • Intended to reduce sexual reoffending amongst participants by identifying and addressing known criminogenic needs

  • Accredited for use in prisons in 1992 — no longer used

Summary

  • Prevention measures tend to be framed as treatment rather than punishment (although often run alongside punishment)

  • Many measures take place once offences have already been committed

  • There are a number of different types of treatment

  • Many are based around changing cognitive processes

  • Cognitive behavioural programmes show mixed results