Grantcoulson's Blog

      “The decade just past marked the transition from red into green. It was the decade in which environmentalism replaced socialism as the authoritarians’ and the busybodies’ ideology of choice.

    I’m not saying there is a conscious conspiracy by old socialists meeting in secret to rebrand themselves as new environmentalists so they can revive their Cold War-era campaign for international governance and regulation.

    Rather, it’s a mindset. The instinct to tell other people what to do is as old as human society. The instant two homo sapiens first came together, one of them probably decided that the other was doing things in a way he or she disliked and that what was needed to deter this miscreant behaviour was a new rule based on an appeal to the “common good.”“

Lorne Gunter, National Post.

the conclusion of Criminal Rehabilitation from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

The DIW Criteria Applied to Effective Correctional Treatment      

             
1. Speed of change. Because the programs deal with real problems, clients can see their utility and begin to apply the principles immediately. Speaking as someone who has run such programs in jails, I know the inmates start using the skills immediately. Very difficult to get the jobs-for-life guards to do the same thing, however.

2. Duration of change. The differences in recidivism lasted during substantial follow-up periods.

3. Amount of change. The differences in recidivism, on several measures, between the program groups and the control groups were considerable.

4. Able to overcome individual differences.  Any group of lawbreakers will likely contain diverse people. The programs outlined above worked without modification for individuals except for those required by individual circumstances. It is always possible that tailoring programs to individual characteristics might work better, but such demonstrations are absent.

5. Transferability to other situations. Transfer occurred automatically because the contingencies were set up to work in the day-to-day life of the client both in and out of prison. The effect obviously worked outside of prison.

6. Orderliness and reproducibility of data from individuals.  The program produced large positive changes in almost all the clients.

7. The behavior has not been changed by a variety of other techniques. High-risk prisoners and delinquents, by definition, have a long history of unsuccessful interventions.

8. Works with clients who are "resistant", "unmotivated" and etc. Motivation was a program variable, not a client characteristic. The impetus to comply with the program was built into the program.

9. Spends much more time on production than explanation. The program concentrated on what the client needed to do, rather than allowing the client to talk about the reasons for his lawbreaking, his feelings about it or his sincerity about quitting.

10. Does not appeal to a currently popular political movement for support. The currently popular treatment in corrections is “finding the reasons for lawbreaking”. These two programs are totally different.

11. Can produce high rates of behavior. The frequency of positive social interactions and law-abiding behavior increased markedly for the clients in the program.

12. Can be used in large groups for efficiency. Most of instruction in the Larson procedure and some of the instruction in Gordon, et al, was done in  groups.

13. Produces change in the ultimate criterion. The purpose of correctional  treatment is to reduce law breaking. These approaches produced large decreases in lawbreaking.

14. Is transportable (or the fancy term–scalable). These programs have manuals, scripts and instructions detailed enough for other people to carry out the same program to get the same results.

     Probably less than one percent of programs would pass the DIW criteria so that at least  99% of resources are wasted.  It would be interesting to know the exact percentage of effective programs in corrections, as it would in other areas. The percentage is probably disturbingly, but not surprisingly,  extremely low. Most programs are unstructured, haphazard, without the strong support of administration and unevaluated. The same dreary story is told in corrections as in other fields. Those who work in the area will say that "It’s a question of resources." In other words, send more money. What is needed, as always, is a system of responsibility, not a method to deliver more money which will disappear down the same Black Hole. \

    As a footnote, Larson resigned from public service because she believed nothing useful could get done.

Cohen, H.F., & Filipczak, J. (1989). A New Learning Environment., Boston, MA: Authors Cooperative, Inc.

Gordon, D. A., Arbuthnot, J., Gustafson, K., & McGreen, P. (1988). Home-based behavioral-systems family therapy with disadvantaged juvenile delinquents. American Journal of Family Therapy, 16, 243-255.

Larson, K.D. (1989). Problem-solving training and parole adjustment in high-risk young adult offenders. in S. Duguid (Ed.) The Yearbook of Correctional Education. 279-299, Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser University.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson

      Cui bono. Who benefits?

    “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.” Frederic Bastiat

    “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” FB

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

Early Prevention–Home-based Behavioral-Systems Family Therapy with High-risk Juvenile Delinquents               

    Gordon, Arbuthnot, Gustafson and McGreen ran an in-home program for juvenile delinquents which produced a recidivism rate of 11.1% vs 66.7% for the control subjects during a follow-up period of more than 2 years. In other words, the recidivism rate of the program group was 16.6% of the non-program group which, because of the way the offenders were allocated, had shorter and less serious criminal histories than the program group. The 27 members of the treatment group had a total of 48 offenses in the year before treatment started, compared to a total of 31 for the control group.

    Their treatment program was based on several assumptions. The first was that home-based programs are much more effective than institution-based programs, thence, most of the programming was done in the delinquent’s home. The second was that  the most important part of the environment of the delinquent was the interaction between the delinquent and other members of his/her family. The third is that better results are obtained when the therapists are well-trained and well-supervised throughout the course of the study to ensure treatment integrity.

    The treatment group members, and their families, had an average of 16 sessions lasting an average of 1.5 hr. The intervention had three phases: assessment, therapy and education. During the assessment phase, the therapists observed the family’s behavior patterns and the reinforcers maintaining them. Problem behaviors were discovered such as non-compliance with parental requests, curfew violations and parent-child conflict. Marital discord was discovered in less than half of the families which had both parents present. The focus of therapy was to reduce blaming and to show how each member was the product of life experiences which had taught the wrong things. Therapists relabelled motives to replace the unkind labels family members were currently using. Family members were taught to respond to each other differently by reinforcing desired behaviors. Parents were taught contingency contracting in which agreements were made to ensure that if the delinquent did something positive the parent would do something positive. Family members were also taught conflict management, communication skills and how to spend enjoyable time together. The parents were taught to keep data, use time-out and maintain note and message centers.

    The same people were followed for 32 more months as adults, making the total follow-up period 5 years. During the second follow-up period, the recidivism rate for the treatment group was 8.7% compared to 40.9% for the control group. In other words, there were 4.7 times as many offenders in the control group.

    Gordon, D. A., Arbuthnot, J., Gustafson, K., & McGreen, P. (1988). Home-based behavioral-systems family therapy with disadvantaged juvenile delinquents. American Journal of Family Therapy, 16, 243-255.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are the government-sponsored enterprises which are emblematic of a lot of things such as mistaking “social justice” for sound business practice and then wondering what went wrong.. Never mind, taxpayers funds will take up the slack. Why, one would wonder, would anyone name financial entities after cartoon characters, but the answer is that Freddie and Fannie have become cartoon characters without any help from their names. This is from the Washington Post and more can be found there.

         “The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress.

    The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama’s current term.

     But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.

      The compensation packages, including up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s chief executives, come amid an ongoing public debate about lavish payments to executives at banks and other financial firms that have received taxpayer aid. But while many firms on Wall Street have repaid the assistance, there is no prospect that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will do so.

     The administration faced a congressionally mandated deadline of Dec. 31 to increase the amount of aid it could provide to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together have already received $111 billion in assistance.”

and another entry from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope: about Criminal Rehabilitation

    The prime mover behind this research was Katherine Larson who stated, at a hearing,  “You may not want to hear it, but in my opinion, over the years, it’s been my experience that elected officials from both parties share with YA leadership and some YA staff the responsibility for the sad state of affairs in youth corrections. Too often over the last 15 years I have seen and experienced elected officials provide funds or press YA administrators to implement programs that had more to do with ideology and personal opinion than effective research-based practice.”

        The Larson Procedure

    Katherine Larson did a program, which contained almost all these requirements, with young gang members incarcerated by the California Youth Authority. Her subjects were high risk, young male gang members from a large American  city who were currently imprisoned and had a very high risk of re-offending. Larson had a matched control group of prisoners which did not receive the program.  Fifteen months after release, 100% of the control group were re-incarcerated vs 25% of the program group. The average number of incarcerated days during the fifteen month period was 313.7 vs 87.4. The average number of "good street days", days working or in school, was 127.6 for the control group and 266 for the program group.

    The program curriculum revolved around social skills and problem-solving training with a scripted, direct instruction, very specific program which required constant student participation via written exercises, role-playing and transfer of skills outside the teaching situation. As Larson told her trainees, "Your problems don"t get you into trouble. Your solutions get you into trouble." The training program was based on the notion that offenders have defective social and problem-solving skills including not being able to take the perspective of others, impulse control problems, inability to plan ahead, inability to define the problem in terms of what to do, inability to formulate solutions not involving law breaking and\or violence and inability to see the consequences of actions. Larson divided the program into three phases which apply to all successful prison rehabilitation programs. The skill acquisition phase referred to the classroom teaching phase. During the skill maintenance phase, the clients met to review their use of skills in the institution. The skill transfer phase occurred after release from prison and was a compulsory part of parole. Trainers showed clients how to apply their skills to their behavior outside prison. The follow-up sessions concentrated on highly structured, specific behaviors which were important for a law-abiding life such as dealing with problems without violence and solving problems and not avoiding them.

    Larson, K.D. (1989). Problem-solving training and parole adjustment in high-risk young adult offenders. in S. Duguid (Ed.) The Yearbook of Correctional Education. 279-299, Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser University.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

Merry Christmas everyone.

     Almost every problem in psychology can be traced to “producer capture” the phenomenon where an enterprise, or profession, is operated solely on the basis of the benefit of the members of the favored group, the producers. This creates a situation in which lip service is paid to effectiveness and the art of window-dressing reaches a new level of expertise and hypocrisy.

    Here’s an example from political economy.

The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm California taxpayers don’t get much bang for their bucks.

    Some quotes:

       “In 1956, the economist Charles Tiebout provided the framework that best explains why people vote with their feet. The “consumer-voter,” as Tiebout called him, challenges government officials to “ascertain his wants for public goods and tax him accordingly.” Each jurisdiction offers its own package of public goods, along with a particular tax burden needed to pay for those goods. As a result, “the consumer-voter moves to that community whose local government best satisfies his set of preferences.” In selecting a jurisdiction, the mobile consumer-voter is, in effect, choosing a club to join based on the benefits that it offers and the dues that it charges.

    It’s not surprising, then, that an intense debate rages over which model is more satisfactory and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes. Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor (emphasis added). For evidence, look to the two largest states in the nation, which are fine representatives of the liberal and conservative alternatives.”

    The report goes on to compare California and Texas, states on diverging paths. Although not stated in the article, the implication is that jurisdictions with higher “social benefits” and high taxes will attract the kind of person who enjoys free money and repel the kind of person who dislikes providing it—too many hammocks, not enough plows. This may get to critical mass, as in California and New York, accelerating their death spiral as productive places. My jurisdiction Ontario, is going that way.

    On a more positive note, the majority of people are hard-working and productive, continue to produce and don’t trade carbon-offset credits or the rights to name leprechauns.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

Today, I will recommend a free book, A Beginner’s Guide to Liberty, which can be downloaded here.

    A few quotes from the book:

    “Imagine you are sitting down to dinner one evening. You open a bottle of wine when there is a knock at the door. You open the door to find your neighbours standing outside. They tell you that they have decided that you must no longer drink alcohol. They confiscate your wine and tell you that if you drink again they will fine you and perhaps even imprison you.

    Most people would consider such behaviour outrageous: what right do our neighbours have to tell us that we cannot drink alcohol? But this is exactly what happens when governments ban things, whether alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, or prostitution, gambling or boxing – things that are all banned in some countries.

    Some people may say that bans by governments are reasonable if they result from a democratic vote, but such a vote is really nothing more than people’s neighbours telling them what they can Imagine you are sitting down to dinner one evening. You open a bottle of wine when there is a knock at the door. You open the door to find your neighbours standing outside. They tell you that they have decided that you must no longer drink alcohol. They confiscate your wine and tell you that if you drink again they will fine you and perhaps even imprison you.

    Most people would consider such behaviour outrageous: what right do our neighbours have to tell us that we cannot drink alcohol? But this is exactly what happens when governments ban things, whether alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, or prostitution, gambling or boxing – things that are all banned in some countries.

    Some people may say that bans by governments are reasonable if they result from a democratic vote, but such a vote is really nothing more than people’s neighbours telling them what they can and cannot do – just like in the example above.

    Laws banning things are widespread: all over the world governments try to stop people from doing things that they want to do, even when those things do not harm other people. This chapter asks whether it is right that governments ban things and looks at the consequences that follow when governments introduce bans.” pp. 68-69

    Elsewhere, the contributing authors point out that government-run industries are “open to ‘producer capture’ – when nationalised industries cater for the needs of their workers instead of their customers.” Good examples are government workers in education where output is not required and training is mistaken for skill.

    It seems that coercion is associated, perhaps perfectly, with concentration on the producer. Producers are able to amass money for lobbying against un-coordinated consumers, usually the rest of us. For example, the G.M. rescue is a rescue of high-priced jobs.

    Governments can deal with the same problems as the free market except for quality, availability, price and quantity.We can be assured that  every government enterprise is flawed, but will last forever and only be change in the face of extreme political embarrassment. Market discipline puts an end to silly practices in the free market

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson