Dr Jane Freeman, Corrections Psychologist.
Movies and TV programmes often sell themselves by promising to transport the viewer “into the mind of a criminal”, and, perhaps surprisingly, many of us happily decide to give our adrenal glands a bit of a work-out and spend an hour or two watching someone we’d never actually want to meet in the street.
Partly, it’s a desire to understand why and how people can do terrible things, but most of us stop there. The film ends with the baddie being arrested in torrential Hollywood rain, and we go back to our real lives.
Dr Jane Freeman is a Corrections psychologist. She spends her days not only understanding why and how people can do terrible things, but helping them understand themselves and learn different ways to behave when they’re back out in the community.
The general approach she uses is cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which aims to challenge and modify irrational or unhelpful thoughts, feelings and behaviour. CBT focuses on changing the way people think in certain situations, and ultimately changing the way they behave.
Jane deals only with high-risk violent and/or sexual offenders.
“We give the highest-risk people the most amount of treatment, in line with our Risk-Need Responsivity Model. At the moment I’m seeing four people at Wellington Prison, and five who are now out on parole in Upper Hutt. I see each person for an hour every week.”
“Offenders don’t get to choose their psychologist, but we’re trained in how to build trust and rapport and mostly they’re eager to talk about things. They often want to change but don’t know how, so we come up with treatment goals together and then break those goals down so they’re manageable.”
One of the therapy techniques she uses is “distress tolerance”. Some people offend because they can’t cope with negative emotions such as anger or fear. Jane uses distress tolerance to help the offender understand and cope with their negative emotions by finding new ways to think and behave.
The bulk of Jane’s work is with people who’ve sexually offended against children. She says there are several different “pathways” to this sort of offending. One pathway, for example, is seen in people who have trouble with adult relationships; they start to avoid them, but feel lonely and substitute a child as a surrogate partner. Another pathway is seen in people with generally anti-social tendencies and a feeling of superiority. A person on this pathway disregards social norms regarding children and sexual behaviour.
She says she doesn’t see many prisoners with major mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, though she agrees with the research that says prisoners have higher rates of mental illness than the general population.
“If I see someone and think they have mental health problems I make a referral to the Forensic Team at the District Health Board.”
As well as her clinical case-load, Jane writes risk assessment reports for the Parole Board, which, for complex cases, involve up to six hours face-to-face time with offenders.
Occasionally, an offender who needs a Parole Board risk-assessment will refuse to be seen. In this case, Jane writes her report using the person’s file information.
If an offender denies responsibility for his offending, or doesn’t see what he’s done as wrong, Jane will first do up to four “motivational interviews” with him.
“I use motivational interviewing when someone comes in and says to me ‘there’s nothing wrong with my violence’. The aim is to have him realise that his behaviour is a problem for him and others and that there are things he can do to change. Obviously, if someone’s motivated to change, the rate of change will be much higher.
One of the things she does to motivate offenders is getting them to draw a “decision grid” that shows all the short and long-term consequences of their offending.
“But if someone continues to have no motivation for change I stop seeing them. There’s a waiting list to see us. It’s better if I spend my time with someone who wants to change.”
She says she measures whether prisoners have changed in different ways, for example, looking for markers such as fewer violent incidents with prison staff and other prisoners.
“A good example is a prisoner I’m seeing who’s been in and out of trouble the whole time he’s been in prison. He’s engaged in ten treatment sessions and for the last six weeks he’s had no violent incidents reported. His unit manager says he’s also mixing with different, more pro-social, prisoners.
“When I first started to see him he was very ambivalent about changing his behaviour, but now he’s talking like someone who wants to change; he’s talking about finding a job when he gets out, leaving the gang he was with. Six weeks is not a long time, but it seems like genuine change and that’s rewarding.”
Risk assessments on sexual offenders for the Parole Board and the Courts are one of Jane’s special interests.
“It’s a stimulating area professionally because here in New Zealand we have a unique computer-based risk-assessment tool on which to base all our judgements. We use a database of offender information that was started in the 1970s which means we can calculate the level of risk a person is likely to pose, based on their age, type of offending and so on. It means we have a more scientific base for our clinical decisions.”
Jane takes the final draft of every Parole Board report she writes to the prisoner involved. She says prisoners often find the reports useful and gain a lot of insight from them.
“But sometimes they’re angry with their reports or disagree with their risk assessments. If I think they’re not going to take it very well I email their unit manager and ask for a Corrections officer to be stationed just outside the room.
“The prisoner checks for factual errors and can request to have those changed, but I don’t change my professional opinion.”
She also writes court reports, such as pre-sentence reports for judges, and extended supervision reports. Extended supervision orders often mean a psychologist has to appear in court to give the judge expert evidence on how the risk assessment was made.
“I’ve got a client at the moment who’s contesting a ten-year extended supervision order. I’ll have to go to court soon for that,” she adds.
The rest of Jane’s time is taken up with supervising both an intern psychologist and a programme facilitator from Intervention Services. She also spends “about a day a month” training, covering a broad gamut of subjects and issues, from risk assessments, to cultural issues, to changes to the Evidence Act 2006.
“I get superb supervision myself, and Corrections is generous in terms of the training we receive. It’s an exciting and stimulating job with plenty of variety. For a psychologist, Corrections is a great place to work!”
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ISSN 1178-8453