“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
