Abstract
The vocational needs of offenders and ex-offenders have received little attention in the counseling psychology literature. The authors of this special issue have called attention to the importance of and possibilities associated with the development and implementation of vocational interventions for such populations. This reaction discusses the merits of the articles in this special issue, and proposes that in addition to focusing on developing effective interventions for offenders and ex-offenders, we must interrogate the U.S. prison enterprise with respect to goals, outcomes, and ultimately, social justice.
Counseling psychology and vocational psychology scholars have called for engaging in research, practice, and policy development that attend to realities, strengths, and concerns of historically marginalized groups (American Psychological Association, 2002; Blustein, 2006; Blustein, McWhirter, & Perry, 2005; Toporek, Gerstein, Fouad, Roysircar, & Israel, 2006; Vera & Speight, 2003). The authors in this special issue have launched a conversation about one such group, a conversation that is critically important and long overdue. Their presentation of a problem statement and literature review, an empirical evaluation of a vocational intervention specific to offenders, and a conceptual model for future vocational intervention development and evaluation lay a foundation on which counseling and vocational psychologists can readily build. The aim of this reaction article is to reflect on these substantive contributions and offer some additional ideas for applying vocational psychology to working with offenders and ex-offenders. These reflections are offered from a critical psychology perspective.
A “critical psychology perspective” encompasses a variety of theoretical orientations, methodologies, and goals. There is no single definition or understanding of critical psychology. At the same time, commonalities across critical psychology principles have been summarized by Fox (2000) and Fox and Prilleltensky (1997) as including the following: acknowledgment of the historical and cultural determination of the values, assumptions, and practices of mainstream psychology; recognition that the status quo is characterized by systemic injustices and inequalities; recognition that mainstream psychology participates in the perpetuation of the status quo through such practices as seeking individualistic solutions to structural and social problems; and that critical psychology attempts to alter the status quo by interrupting the replication of injustice and inequality, and enhancing the welfare of communities, and particularly the welfare of groups that are oppressed.
Aspects of the status quo most relevant to this special issue include the high rates of incarceration and recidivism in the United States (Pew Center on the States, 2011), and the disproportionate representation of marginalized groups in the U.S. prison system. For example, the number of juveniles in residential facilities per 100,000 youth is 128 for Whites and 229 for Latinos (Sickmund, Sladky, & Kang, 2010). Alexander (2010) documented and analyzed the terribly disproportionate incarceration of African American males in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Additional illustrations of the disproportional representation of ethnic minorities in corrections facilities were provided by Varghese and Cummings (2012). Furthermore, a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (James & Glaze, 2006) concluded that over half of prison and jail inmates in 2005 had mental health problems; for example, symptoms meeting the criteria for mania were reported by 43% of state prisoners and 54% of jail inmates. Estimates suggest that between 20% and 60% of youth in juvenile or adult correctional facilities have disabilities (Rutherford, Bullis, Anderson, & Griller-Clark, 2002).
Certainly, it is important to develop vocational interventions that attend to the needs of people with disabilities, people with mental illness, and members of ethnic minority groups who are or were incarcerated. A critical psychology perspective also questions why the system exists in its present form, and why the United States has a much higher rate of incarceration than any other nation in the world. A recent poll suggests that the majority of Americans, across party lines, believe that too many Americans are imprisoned and that too much money is spent on incarceration (Pew Center on the States, 2012). Identification of the factors that lead to higher rates of incarceration, such as the “war on drugs” (Alexander, 2010), and conditions that increase vulnerability to criminal behaviors such as environmental factors (e.g., poverty) and biological markers (e.g., prenatal exposure to nicotine) are another line of investigation. A critical psychology perspective questions whether the overt goals of the current justice system—to protect the public by deterring criminal behavior and by punishing that which occurs—are well served. A critical psychology perspective interrogates the covert goals of the current system: Who benefits from a system in which marginalized groups are disproportionately warehoused, away from the public eye, and subjected to “treatment” that often does not dissuade crime, reduce recidivism, or attend to mental health or other issues that led to the incarceration (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003; Pew Center on the States, 2011)? Who benefits when funding is directed toward building, staffing, and populating facilities for incarceration instead of funding prevention efforts (Davis, 2003)? The emphasis in the United States on severe punishment sometimes embraced by the public is not consistent with recommendations from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) for the prevention of delinquency and crime (Sanders, 2010) and is a frequent human rights concern (Amnesty International, 2012; Fine & Torre, 2006; Human Rights Watch, 2012). The OJJDP recommendations are not new. Recommendations from the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals in 1973, described by Alexander (2010), call for the closing of facilities for juveniles, and that no further correction facilities for adults be constructed, based on evidence that such facilities not only fail to deter but actually increase criminal behavior.
A critical perspective considers not only the efficacy of the current system but also the social, economic, and moral costs of the status quo, and explores alternative methods of deterring crime and enhancing public safety, such as infusing universal, comprehensive prevention programs in public education (e.g., Sanders, 2010), and strengthening policies that support the ability of families to nurture and provide healthy environments for their children (e.g., McWhirter, McWhirter, McWhirter, & McWhirter, 2013). Policy change and prevention efforts are essential to altering the status quo.
This reaction piece is not the place to pursue the questions raised above, but such questions must precede consideration of the secondary prevention and remedial intervention strategies offered in this special issue. The important recommendations made by the authors in this special issue directly address many weaknesses of current policy and practices, but do not step back and question the entire prison enterprise.
Why Apply Vocational Psychology to Criminal Justice Populations?
Why not? As Varghese and Cummings described, this is a growing population in which members of marginalized groups are overrepresented, and postincarceration employment is associated with lower rates of recidivism. They make a convincing case regarding the need for and the benefits associated with provision of vocational services to offenders and ex-offenders, and note the consistency of such efforts with the emphases of both counseling and vocational psychology on social justice. The presentation of terminology is a useful primer for those not familiar with this language.
Varghese and Cummings note that in their article, for practical reasons, the terms “employment” and “career” refer only to legal pathways. This makes sense, as it avoids the need to consistently clarify that the goals of vocational services for offenders and ex-offenders are to alter rather than further a trajectory of illegal activity. At the same time, this decision implicitly acknowledges that the offenses for which people are incarcerated very often include deliberate, planned behaviors carried out to meet the needs fulfilled by work: survival and power, social connection, and self-determination (Blustein, 2006). Later in the article, however, the authors appear to imply that only legal means of providing food and shelter for self and others can lead to self-sufficiency and dignity. Such an assumption risks overlooking the outcome expectations, self-efficacy expectations, and personal goals that have contributed to interests, choices, and actions associated with illegal behavior.
The description of the work of psychologists in prisons provides very useful background information. Fruitful next steps may be to further elaborate on prison, jail, and other detention settings with respect to questions such as these: What other structural and personnel characteristics can be expected to vary in local, state, and federal facilities, and how might such variations influence possibilities for vocational interventions? What pathways have psychologists working in these settings followed? How have they overcome obstacles to gaining experience in such settings? What skills have they found most essential to working effectively in detention, jail, and prison settings? How can counseling psychology programs with and without training options for prison settings increase students’ preparation for such settings? The attention these authors have called to the issue, in combination with increased information about “what” and “how,” may help to increase the number of counseling psychologists providing vocational services directly and indirectly in prison, jail, and other detention settings.
The authors recommend the development of theoretically based interventions with offenders and ex-offenders, and then illustrate using social cognitive career theory (SCCT). The selection of SCCT seems especially appropriate for a number of reasons. The bidirectional relationships between person, environment, and behavior inherent in SCCT acknowledge the profound influence of context without minimizing the role of human agency. Attention to person inputs and to distal and proximal contextual supports and barriers highlights risk factors consistently acknowledged in the larger literature on offenders. Person inputs such as race/ethnicity, intelligence, gender, and disabilities obviously are relevant to this population, given the disproportional representation of particular subgroups among the incarcerated.
The description of barriers and supports faced by offenders and ex-offenders would be further enhanced by distinguishing between distal and proximal influences. Vocational interventions for offenders cannot “undo” distal background barriers such as substandard K-12 education, childhood poverty, and past experiences of discrimination, but can provide contemporary learning experiences designed to counter the negative effects of such past barriers on self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals. For example, General Educational Development (GED) programs can enhance academic self-efficacy through provision of opportunities for performance accomplishments, verbal persuasion, and opportunities to observe similar others setting and achieving goals for learning. Furthermore, proximal barriers or “process expectations” (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 2000, p. 44) associated with, for example, having a criminal record can be addressed through interventions that enhance knowledge (e.g., viable occupations for someone with a criminal record, rights of persons with disabilities) and skills for coping with barriers (e.g., how to contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).
Another facet of SCCT alluded to earlier that could be applied to offenders and ex-offenders is to explore the role of self-efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, and personal goals in the development of interests, goals, and actions associated with illegal behavior and recidivism. For example, to what extent do outcome expectations of early release or no jail time influence the likelihood of compliance with sentencing? A newspaper article in my local community reported that inmates know that the jail’s holding capacity is now so small that they don’t worry about any consequences from violating release conditions or court orders . . . inmates don’t feel compelled to show up for court, pay fines, do community service or meet other requirements because they know there won’t be room for them in the jail if they’re rearrested. (Bolt, 2012)
Wright (2010) argued that it is the certainty of punishment rather than the severity of punishment that provides a deterrent to crime. As such, understanding self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals in the context of interests, goals, and actions related to income-generating criminal behavior may be quite salient to the development of SCCT-based interventions designed to prevent initial offenses, reduce recidivism, and support the pursuit of legal vocational pathways. Varghese (2012) addresses the importance of exploring illegal activity as work in the final article of this issue.
OPTIONS: An Employment Preparation Intervention
Fitzgerald and her colleagues (2012) present the development and testing of an intervention for supporting the vocational development of offenders. OPTIONS (Chronister & Fitzgerald, 2008) is directly derived from the ACCESS program for women survivors of domestic violence. Note that I served as a consultant on the development of ACCESS, and this experience informs my critique.
OPTIONS is theoretically and empirically based, and though derived from an intervention for a different marginalized group, the program was tailored to the population and setting in which it was delivered. Results of the OPTIONS intervention suggest that the intervention yielded gains, relative to the treatment as usual group in the prison, in self-efficacy beliefs for searching for and obtaining employment, perceived problem-solving skills, and hopefulness. These participant gains were maintained at a 1-month follow-up. Given that these significant findings were obtained with a relatively small sample size, these are very promising results. The challenges of conducting experimental research in a prison setting are significant, which doubtless contributes to the lack of prior research described by Varghese and Cummings (2012). Hopefully, the work of Fitzgerald and her colleagues encourages other counseling psychologists to pursue similar research, and sets the stage for future, larger scale vocational interventions with prisoners. Ideally, future implementation of OPTIONS will include assessment of other intended outcomes, such as critical consciousness, short- and long-term goal planning skills, resource and support awareness and utilization, and awareness of career interests. The lack of behavioral indicators of program outcomes, noted as a limitation by the authors, could hinder adoption of this intervention on a larger scale.
Fitzgerald and colleagues describe the intervention as cost-effective without reporting specific data to substantiate that claim. Here is an (admittedly simplistic) attempt to provide some data to that effect. One full-time staff member could deliver the intervention daily to 24 people (three groups of 8 offenders each). With five total intervention sessions per participant, and assuming 48 weeks of intervention delivery per calendar year, a total of 1,152 offenders could be served by one full-time interventionist annually. Let us assume a salary of US$68,640 for the interventionist (the median pay in 2010 for a psychologist; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) and add US$34,320 for OPE (Other Payroll Expenses), for a total of US$102,960 in salary. Furthermore, let us assume a recidivism rate of 43% (derived from a multistate survey by the Pew Center on the States, 2011) and an annual cost of incarceration of US$30,000 per person (the low end of a range derived from a CBS report aired April 22, 2012, titled The Cost of a Nation of Incarceration). Reducing recidivism by 4 people per year, which translates to .35 of 1% of the participants, would more than cover one full-time salary as well as costs for materials. This seems like a very low-risk investment.
The state of Oregon, where this intervention took place, has been highlighted for progressive policies that lower recidivism (Pew Center on the States, 2011), including the use of data rather than public sentiment to make policy decisions. The OPTIONS program and other multicomponent vocational interventions for offenders may be more likely to be adopted in states with progressive policies, but longer term and more multidimensional follow-up data, including accurate assessment of cost-effectiveness, could increase the likelihood of broader adoption.
Vocational Interventions With Offenders: Interdisciplinary Research, Theory, and Integration
In the final article, Varghese suggests that vocational interventions for offenders and ex-offenders should capitalize on the possibilities yielded by integrating more than one theoretical framework or model. This recommendation is not based on a flaw or weakness of SCCT, rather, it recognizes the fact that any theory is developed to explain a particular set of behaviors, and not all behaviors of relevance to offender and ex-offender career development are represented in the model. The Canadian “Risk–Need–Responsivity” or RNR framework used by Varghese to illustrate such integration is a practical choice because this framework was developed specifically for the purpose of rehabilitation of criminals and reduction of recidivism. According to this model, interventions for criminals should be tailored such that they respond to the level of risk that the individual will re-offend, attend to the person’s criminogenic needs, and include cognitive-behavioral treatment that aligns with the individual’s strengths, motivation level, abilities, and learning style (Bonta & Andrews, 2007). A summary table in Bonta and Andrews (2007) presents areas of risk factors and criminogenic needs along with corresponding possible intervention goals consistent with each, for example: Antisocial personality patterns (teach anger management), procriminal attitudes (counter rationalizations and foster a prosocial identity), procrime social support networks (replace with prosocial supports), substance abuse problems (harm reduction), dysfunctional parenting and family relationships (teach parenting skills), problems with education and/or work (develop study skills, interpersonal skills), and lack of prosocial recreation involvement (identify and pursue prosocial activities). This holistic approach aligns well with the long-standing recognition of the overlap between “personal” and “career” counseling (e.g., Betz & Corning, 1993).
The OPTIONS program (Chronister & Fitzgerald, 2008) can be evaluated with respect to how well components of RNR are attended to in the intervention. For example, offering the same program to all inmates does not reflect tailoring the intervention to an inmate’s particular cluster of risk factors, but within each intervention group there is freedom to respond to the unique concerns of group members. The group format and emphasis on critical consciousness offers the possibility of increasing self-awareness, enhancing interpersonal skills, and developing prosocial supports; the skills components would be useful to education and work settings. With respect to responsivity, OPTIONS deliberately incorporates cognitive-behavioral interventions, and emphasizes strengths and abilities. Thus, in a number of important ways, the OPTIONS intervention is consistent with RNR principles.
Intervention efforts should also take advantage of existing resources designed for ex-offenders, such as those offered by organizations engaged in advocacy. For example, the goal of the National Helping Individuals with criminal records Re-enter through Employment (H.I.R.E.) is “to increase the number and quality of job opportunities available to people with criminal records by changing public policies, employment practices and public opinion” ((http://www.hirenetwork.org/). H.I.R.E. is a project of the Legal Action Center of New York and provides free publications that address such issues as protection from discrimination, and an advocacy toolkit (see (http://www.hirenetwork.org/content/publications). The Legal Action Center also has a publication on state-by-state laws affecting employment and other central issues for ex-offenders; this publication includes a web-based resource list (see (http://www.lac.org/roadblocks-to-reentry/). Another resource, The Next Step “brings together recently released Federal and State Felons (Candidates) looking for work, the Agencies and Facilities that manage their post-release experience, and ‘Felon-Friendly’ Employers who appreciate the value these men and women can bring to the workplace” (https://www.thenextstep99.com/). Resources such as these may be useful in the context of developing a vocational intervention program for ex-offenders, as well as for individual work with ex-offenders.
This article and indeed each of the articles in this special issue prompted me to reflect on other potentially useful models to incorporate into vocational work with offenders. For example, Prochaska and colleagues’ (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992; Prochaska & Norcross, 2001) Stages of Change model characterizes behavior change in terms of five stages: precontemplation (I do not need to change my behavior), contemplation (I may need to change my behavior a bit, but not today), preparation (I am going to change my behavior . . . tomorrow), action (I am actively working to change my behavior), and maintenance (I have made a change in my behavior and am continuing to maintain this change). This model has been used to match treatment interventions with an individual’s readiness to engage in behavior change associated with addiction, weight management, and other health-related behaviors (Prochaska et al., 1992). Certain types of intervention strategies are thought to be more effective in assisting a person to move from, for example, precontemplation to contemplation, than another transition point, for example, action to maintenance. The importance of altering offender attitudes and behaviors to enhance future employability, such as increasing responsibility-taking and decreasing antisocial attitudes, suggests that a Stages of Change approach may also have utility in the design of integrative models of vocational interventions for offenders and ex-offenders.
Intervention development efforts should attend to Varghese’s summary of prior literature reviews, which highlights the benefits of comprehensive, multicomponent interventions over single component interventions, the tailoring of interventions to this specific population, inclusion of attitude changes in outcomes measurement, and greater rigor in the design of vocational intervention research with offenders and ex-offenders.
Conclusion
The articles in this special issue provide a strong foundation for increasing the application of vocational psychology to offender and ex-offender populations. To be effective, vocational psychology prevention practices and intervention strategies must take into account risk and protective factors operating in the lives of potential offenders, offenders, and ex-offenders.
Efforts to increase vocational services to offenders and ex-offenders are consistent with counseling psychology’s prevention philosophy as well as a social justice orientation. Even as we work to better address the vocational needs of offenders and ex-offenders, a critical psychology perspective calls for addressing the systemic and structural issues and policies contributing to the extremely high rates of incarceration in the United States, the failure of incarceration to adequately deter crime and recidivism, and the overrepresentation of marginalized groups among the incarcerated.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.