Abstract
We comment on the major contributions on applications of vocational psychology to criminal justice populations. All three articles present exciting directions for vocational psychology research and practice—directions that have exceptional resonance with the field’s commitment to social justice. We are intrigued by the authors’ use of social cognitive career theory (SCCT), along with the risks–need–responsivity model, as a theoretical platform for enhancing the vocational development of offenders. We suggest that this integrative effort may be aided by inclusion of a new SCCT process model of career development. We briefly summarize this process model and consider how it may be applied to interventions designed to promote vocational outcomes and reduce recidivism with criminal justice populations.
We feel honored to provide a commentary on the three articles on applications of vocational psychology to criminal justice populations in this issue of The Counseling Psychologist (TCP). This set of articles serves as a testament to counseling and vocational psychologists’ renewed commitment to reach out to underserved client populations, to adapt our theoretical and practice tools so as to make them applicable beyond the field’s traditional comfort zone, and to “live” the social justice values that are so dear to the profession. Varghese and her colleagues continue the important work initiated by others in our field who have stretched the purview of counseling and vocational psychology to include school safety, teen pregnancy prevention, domestic abuse survival, and a variety of other topics that extend far beyond the boundaries of the traditional counseling room (e.g., Chronister & McWhirter, 2006; Espelage & Horne, 2008; Vera & Reese, 2000).
To this point, there have been relatively few counseling psychology research or practice articles on the vocational behavior of offenders or ex-offenders (e.g., Chartrand & Rose, 1996; Shivy et al., 2007). We were excited to see the work presented in the current issue of TCP. This work has clear social justice and policy implications, and represents a major step forward in conversations regarding how counseling psychology, in general, and vocational psychology, in particular, can better assist offenders and ex-offenders. Most of the literature, as evidenced by the reference sections of the three major contributions, has emanated from other fields—although counseling/vocational psychology seems uniquely positioned to attend to the frequent vocational and nonvocational needs (e.g., substance abuse) of this population, given the field’s emphasis on social justice and deep roots (dating back to Frank Parsons) in assisting the underserved.
We very much appreciated the authors’ use of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as a part of their integrative approach. Varghese and Cummings (2012) argued persuasively that vocational psychology and SCCT can play valuable roles in understanding and promoting the vocational attainments of offenders; Fitzgerald and colleagues (2012) showed the potential of a SCCT-linked intervention to promote positive outcomes in a sample of offenders; and Varghese (2012) demonstrated how elements of SCCT, from the vocational literature, and the risks–needs–responsivity (RNR) model, from the criminal justice literature, can be integrated to form a multifaceted approach to vocational and prosocial behavior, and, in particular, avoidance of future criminal activity. In this reaction, we hope to contribute to the authors’ theoretical integration by (a) summarizing a newer SCCT model focused on career process behaviors that may help inform vocational interventions with offenders and (b) considering the implications of this model for the authors’ practice and research agendas.
A Process Model of Adaptive Career Behavior
SCCT currently consists of four interconnected, segmental models of interest development, choice making, performance, and satisfaction in educational and vocational pursuits (Lent & Brown, 2006, 2008; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000). These models focus largely on content aspects of career development—that is, predicting the types of educational and vocational activity domains to which people gravitate, how satisfying they will find them, and how well they will perform in them. Although these models have stimulated a good deal of inquiry, a growing body of work has applied the models to process as opposed to content aspects of career behavior, though they were not originally designed for such a purpose. For example, although SCCT’s interest and choice models were developed to explain and predict the types of educational and occupational choices people make and eventually enter (e.g., whether to become a house painter or a nurse), these models have often been used to study process dimensions of career behavior—such as general career decision making (i.e., how people make decisions rather than what decisions they make), job finding, and management of personal identity at work—that are not necessarily linked to particular occupational domains. We think that SCCT can be useful in such contexts—and, specifically, in the current context of promoting prosocial employment in offenders. However, we also believe that the theory may be more flexibly applied in these contexts if its constructs and predictions are formally extended to address cross-occupational career behaviors that people use to adapt to their work settings and to cope with the challenges they pose.
We have called the new process model the SCCT model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2012) because its focus is on how people help to direct their own behavior (in concert with the environment, learning experiences, personality factors, and other influences) when negotiating routine career tasks as well as unusual career challenges, within and across different educational/vocational fields. A process focus is concerned with such questions as how people make choices (rather than what specific choices they make), manage transitions (e.g., from school to work or prison to work), find jobs, maintain job involvement, respond to work-related setbacks, and disengage from work. We will outline the model and suggest ways in which it may support Varghese and colleagues’ applications of SCCT to interventions for criminal justice populations.
The new SCCT model suggests that there exist across different developmental periods adaptive career behaviors and attitudes that serve to promote career development and occupational entry, satisfaction, and success. Examples include developing positive work habits and attitudes, engaging in career exploration activities, developing employability skills, making career decisions, coping with barriers to occupational attainment or success, identifying employment supports, and managing transitions. As an SCCT model, the process model relies on the same core variables (e.g., self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, goals, contextual supports, and barriers) as do SCCT’s content models, but it defines and contextualizes them in novel ways. As shown in Figure 1, the engagement in adaptive career behaviors, such as job-finding activities, is assumed to be affected by several classes of behaviors, including the proximal influences of task-related self-efficacy beliefs (e.g., job-finding self-efficacy), outcome expectations (e.g., perceived outcomes of engaging in job-finding behaviors), goals (e.g., job-finding goals or intentions), environmental supports and barriers (job-finding supports and barriers), and personality factors. Also included are other distal and proximal (e.g., ability, culture) influences that constitute a person’s “social address” and that may influence engagement in adaptive career behaviors directly and indirectly (e.g., via the learning experiences to which one is exposed).
Model of career self-management.
The Model’s Relevance to Offender Career Development
To illustrate with an example that is in keeping with the major contributions in this issue, the SCCT process model would suggest that the amount of time and effort that ex-offenders devote to the job-search process, and their degree of persistence when faced with disappointing results, may partly depend on (a) job-search self-efficacy, (b) job-search outcome expectations (e.g., expectations for finding a desirable job), (c) goals (e.g., intentions to perform specific job-search behaviors), (d) availability of a social network of support for the job search and its emotional strains, and (e) the presence of barriers to the process (e.g., unavailability of certain classes of jobs, lack of transportation). Personality factors like conscientiousness and extraversion (and antisocial personality) may also affect engagement in job-search behaviors either directly or indirectly via their influence on self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and goals.
How might this SCCT process model apply to developing interventions for criminal justice populations and to Varghese’s (2012) integrative SCCT-RNR model? An SCCT-based intervention could start by identifying specific adaptive behaviors that might promote successful work outcomes. The three major contributions suggest a variety of relevant adaptive behaviors and attitudes. These employment-related variables, abstracted in Table 1, include willingness to work (even when the work may be less than optimal), employment preparation, job finding, job maintenance (i.e., adapting to work and persisting in the face of challenges), and overcoming employment-related barriers. Parenthetically, we would also include, to the extent possible, identifying interesting and satisfying work for which the SCCT content models could be used (e.g., work that is consistent with the individual’s interests, values, and skills), along with the barriers that may impede ex-offenders from pursuing certain types of employment or education. The adaptive tasks in Table 1 also include behaviors and attitudes that are not exclusively tied to employment but, according to the major contributions, may deter recidivism. Examples include interpersonal skills, emotional self-regulation, and antisocial attitudes (or their opposite, prosocial attitudes).
Examples of Adaptive Behaviors and Attitudes Associated With Employability and Reduced Recidivism.
The SCCT process model suggests ways in which interventions may be designed to promote acquisition of each adaptive behavior. For example, if one wanted to intervene to promote more positive work habits and attitudes among prison inmates, the model would suggest inclusion of treatment elements focused on (a) learning these behaviors and attitudes, (b) developing strong and robust efficacy beliefs about one’s abilities to execute and sustain these behaviors and attitudes, (c) acquiring positive outcome expectations about the utility of displaying positive work habits and attitudes despite the difficulties one may encounter at work, (d) setting manageable goals, and (e) developing institutional and interpersonal support systems that can help sustain one’s efforts. Similarly, interventions to reduce antisocial attitudes (or to promote prosocial attitudes) may help offenders to acquire the beliefs that they can change such attitudes (attitude change self-efficacy) and that the effort to change their attitudes will be worth it (attitude change outcome expectations). Such interventions would also help offenders set manageable goals for attitude change, identify potential stumbling blocks in their attitude change efforts (attitude change barriers), and build social and institutional supports for these efforts. In keeping with Varghese’s (2012) review of work on coping efficacy, it may also be important to promote task self-efficacy (e.g., perceived ability to demonstrate positive work habits and transition from prison to work) and coping efficacy (e.g., perceived ability to endure setbacks and barriers).
These are but two examples of how the process model can be used to conceptualize interventions for offender populations, and the same set of social cognitive predictors may be modified to promote other potentially adaptive behaviors that might reduce recidivism in these populations. The self-management model is, therefore, intended to offer a flexible template for the study of adaptive career behaviors in diverse settings and with a variety of populations. It may complement the SCCT content models by offering a set of testable predictions concerning how a variety of adaptive attitudes, behaviors, and emotions can be developed and sustained even in the face of obstacles.
On Matching Intervention Elements and Outcomes to Theory
We appreciated the OPTIONS intervention study by Fitzgerald and colleagues (2012). The OPTIONS model is rooted in Chronister and McWhirter’s (2006) pioneering ACCESS program for the survivors of domestic abuse. Although many of the intervention elements seemed well tied to SCCT, it may be that some of the outcome variables, in particular, problem solving and hopefulness, were not optimally linked to the theory. From the perspective of the new process model, career search self-efficacy would be a reasonable outcome variable to the extent that the intervention was designed to promote such efficacy percepts. Problem solving and hopefulness were, however, assessed as global trait-like variables rather than as context-specific social cognitive variables. General problem solving may not be an ideal proxy for task-specific self-efficacy or skills, and global hopefulness may not be an ideal index of outcome expectations, at least from an SCCT process perspective.
Despite these quibbles, it was noteworthy that practically meaningful change was observed on each of the outcome measures. In future research, we would advocate inclusion of task-specific measures of relevant adaptive behaviors and outcome expectations as well as measures of postrelease functioning (e.g., engagement in actual job-search activities, success at job finding, reductions in recidivism). Although it must be challenging to obtain such measures once offenders leave correctional facilities, such data seem essential to fully evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the intervention.
Willingness to Work and Engagement in Illegal Careers
Varghese (2012) points to “willingness to work” as an understudied career variable that may be even more relevant than vocational interests to offender’s motivation to seek work. This is an intriguing hypothesis. We suspect that willingness to do legally sanctioned, available work, even of an unskilled or entry-level nature, may well serve as a potent job-finding and job-keeping motivator—particularly where there are barriers to obtaining work that is more desirable (e.g., consistent with one’s interests and developed or aspirational skills), or where economic need compels selection of more immediately available work options for which one qualifies. In the terms of SCCT, willingness to work may be conceptualized as a form of work-seeking goal (e.g., “I intend to look for any reasonable type of noncriminal work that will pay the bills right now”), which may be facilitated by job-search self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations that engaging in such work will be worth the effort, and job-search and job-retention supports.
Although willingness to do licit work may be distinguished from willingness to do illegal work, both may be subject to similar social cognitive influences. As Varghese (2012) observes, Some offenders engage in illegal employment such as drug dealing, shoplifting, and robbing as a form of work . . . Understandably, the view of work as an illegal career has not been given adequate attention in current vocational theory and assessments. (p. 1031)
Her points are well taken, yet economically based criminal activities, like drug dealing or theft, may be seen as forms of work that are responsive to context-specific self-efficacy, outcome expectations, personality factors (e.g., risk-taking propensities), peer supports, and learning experiences. Although it was not explicitly designed to explain illegal careers, SCCT may well be useful in understanding content and process aspects of criminal work (e.g., how one gravitates toward such work, the particular form of criminal activity selected, and the conditions that promote its persistence), particularly when access to licit work activities has been blocked by discrimination, educational limitations, or other barriers.
Conclusion
We thank the authors of the major contributions for providing such thought-provoking articles. They have taken on an immensely important task that we hope will inspire other researchers and practitioners to follow their lead. We also hope that the ideas and reactions we have presented will assist their efforts and contribute to further discourse and inquiry on the application of vocational psychology to criminal justice populations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.