Psychological services Director David Riley has seen major changes during his 37 years with Corrections. Psychology has come a long way since the 1970s, especially in our knowledge about offenders and how to treat them.
David says the current psychological approaches used by Corrections are backed up by over two-and-a-half thousand evaluations of treatment. Psychological treatment is proven to reduce re-offending by 10 to 40 per cent.
“It’s about evidence,” says David. “What we do now is use techniques that have been scientifically proven to be effective in carefully controlled studies.”
As well as statistical evidence, David has seen compelling evidence in individual lives. “I remember one offender I knew in the 70s who had hit absolute rock bottom. He was at the end of the line for drug use, he weighed seven stone and had festering sores. Now, he’s got his own advertising business that turns over about $7 million a year. He still rings me up from time to time.”
Other offenders who’ve received psychological treatment have turned around and put their energy back into helping others. “At the Salisbury Street Foundation in Christchurch, a self-help programme for offenders, we treated people with histories of drug abuse, violent crime, and armed robbery. People with nicknames like ‘Rumble’. But they cleaned up their act, and became the charismatic leaders of the organisation. Now they go to school groups and talk about how they’ve turned their lives around.”
David is unequivocal that research studies support rehabilitation programmes, as opposed to a purely ‘prison as punishment’ approach. “Twenty-seven thousand studies of humans and animals show that punishment is the single least effective way to deter negative behaviour,” he says.
Psychology practices haven’t always been this well supported. “When I started with Corrections, there was a prevailing pessimism that treatment had little to offer, in terms of offender rehabilitation,” says David. “In 1974 an American sociologist published a paper that had catastrophic results for treatment programmes. Lots of programmes in North America were axed because it was claimed they did not work. It became really hard to justify your existence in the field.”
David says the lack of openness and accountability in the 1970s stymied offender rehabilitation. “Offenders couldn’t look at their own files, as they can now. Because they didn’t know what was being said about them, they didn’t know how or what to change.”
One positive result of the ‘prevailing pessimism’ was that it prompted now-iconic figures in correctional psychology to publish research. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, multiple research studies were aggregated that showed which factors led to treatment being most effective. The result is the robust psychological practices the Department uses today.
David says the techniques are successful because they’re relevant for offenders. “Things like offenders’ self-image and confidence have nothing to do with re-offending. If you focus solely on self-image issues, all you get is a really confident criminal.”
“We target issues such as drug use, stability of relationships, employment skills, emotional and behavioural regulation skills, and the ability of offenders to assert themselves appropriately.
“We deliver the treatment in a way that’s compatible with the learning styles of the offenders,” he says. “We don’t lecture them or give them a book to read. We actively engage with them in the therapeutic process.”
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