Offender Punishments, Treatments and Preventing Crime

Offender Punishments, Treatments and Preventing Crime.

Section B

a) Outline treatment programmes and punishments for offenders [10]

b) Evaluate treatment programmes and punishments for offenders [16]

c) You have been asked to develop a treatment programme for offenders to reduce car crime. What suggestions will you make? Give reasons for your answer. [8]

a) Punishments have multiple functions in society such as incapacitation, acting as deterrents, and rehabilitating the offenders, however, many offenders commit further crimes soon after being released, and in 1994 the reconviction rate was as high as 82% of released offenders. Walker & Farrington (1981) conducted a study to investigate the effectiveness of different punishments on recidivism rates by following 2069 male offenders after they had been released. The types of sentences that were studied included prison, probation and fines, and it was suggested by the results that of the various factors and variables that could influence an offenders probability of re-offending, it was the number of previous convictions that dictated which punishment would be most effective for an offender. Results provided that for those offenders with no previous convictions imprisonment was the most effective; those with one-to-four previous convictions probation was most effective; and for those with more than 5 convictions the type of punishment had no influence on recidivism rates.

One treatment programme that psychologists have developed to help deal with offenders is that of Token Economy. Token Economy systems work based on the ideas of Operant Conditioning whereby behaviours can be learned and unlearned through the use of positive re-enforcers such as sweets or phone cards. Hobbs & Holt (1976) studied the effects of implementing a Token Economy within three small juvenile delinquent centres; also studying a centre with no treatment programmes as a control group. Within these centres token were awarded for behaviours such as obeying rules, doing chores, co-operative social interactions, and appropriate behaviour. It was observed that there was a significant increase, in those institutions where the Token Economy was introduced, in desired behaviour. It was therefore suggested that using Token Economy programmes provides successful way of dealing with socially desirable behaviour in the short term (Rice et al. (1990)).

A more long-term solution for treating offenders was provided by Novaco (1975) in the form of Anger Management. Anger Management is based on the solid principles of the cognitive-behavioural approach that attempts to alter the underlying attitudes and beliefs of an offender allowing this to influence their subsequent behaviours. Anger Management programmes are consist of three distinct stages: cognitive preparation where the main focus is identification of anger and situations where anger is prevalent; skill acquisition where the focus is on developing skills to better deal with anger situations; finally, application and practice which is the repeated rehearsal of those skills. Ireland (2000) investigated the effectiveness of Anger Management programmes by studying the self-reported angry behaviours and reports from prison officers of inmates on an Anger Management course. These results were compared with a matched group of offenders who were waiting to complete the course. The results from this study showed significant reductions in angry behaviours in those offenders who had completed the course over those who had not (92% of prisoners showed improvements).

b) An initial criticism of studies in this area of research is the narrow samples that are used in the research which are not representative of the general population. As a result of this we could have problems generalising the results to offenders of different crimes, locations, races, or genders. For example Sugg et al.’s study of the effectiveness of electronic monitoring curfews sample consisted of males aged from early to late twenties, and had typically been convicted of crimes such as theft, burglary, and driving offences. In comparison the research on Token Economy by Hobbs & Holt (1976) only looked at juvenile offenders in three institutions and not at the effectiveness of the programmes in other institutions such as prisons. Even though these samples don’t represent the general population many offenders are young males so samples such as this may actually reflect the target population of generalisations.

Studies conducted to investigate the effectiveness of punishments and treatment programmes, by their nature, use participants selected from real prisons. As a result there is a large amount of ecological validity as the behaviours observed are in the natural environment and little manipulation has taken place. For example, the Walker & Farrington (1981) study followed 2069 offenders after they had been released to see how many of them re-offended. The researchers did not manipulate anything, but merely recorded the recidivism rate therefore allowing a large amount of ecological validity. Similarly, the studies on treatment programmes (Hobbs & Holt (1976) and Ireland (2000)) looked at the effectiveness of those programmes in real prisons and juvenile centres. Consequently, if studies are high in ecological validity researchers can be more confident when making generalisations to behaviour outside of the research.

Research in this area have shown that treatment programmes can be useful tools to reduce both long and short-term behaviours, therefore, suggesting definite applications to real-world situations. For example, Hobbs & Holt (1976) showed that Token Economy systems significantly lower undesirable behaviours within juvenile institutions. Further to this Ireland (2000) also showed the useful applications of cognitive-behavioural approaches such as Anger Management to lowing long-term recidivism rates in offenders. Even though research in this area has shown to have useful applications, there is little longitudinal research to investigate the long-term permanent effects of such programs.

A final problem with research into punishments and treatment programmes lies in the researchers only focusing on one variable that could be the cause of a problem; this is known as being reductionist. An example of reductionism in the research can be seen in Walker & Farrington’s (1981) research as they only suggested that the type of punishment should be related only to the number of previous convictions. Many other factors should be taken into consideration when sentencing such as type of crime, family situations, etc. In contrast some researchers identify that many variables or factors need to be looked at to provide the best chance of reducing reconviction rates. Sugg et al. suggested that punishment programmes where not enough to lower recidivism rates and that punishments should be used in conjunction with other treatment programmes (such as cognitive-behavioural approaches) to be successful.