International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Professional decision making in forensic clinical practice may have lifelong consequences for offenders. Although information on moral development is important for prediction of reoffending and referral to adequate treatment, conclusions regarding moral development are still largely based on unstructured clinical judgment instead of assessment instruments. For this study, the authors examined to what extent unstructured clinical judgment of both moral judgment and victim empathy concurred with test results in a group of young sex offenders. Moral judgment was measured with the Sociomoral Reflection Measure–Short Form (SRM-SF), whereas victim empathy was measured with an extended version of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES). No significant associations were found between clinical judgment of moral judgment and the mean scores on the SRM-SF. However, clinical judgment of victim empathy was significantly associated with victim empathy on the Victim Empathy Scale but not consistently in the expected direction. Juvenile sex offenders, who were judged by clinicians to show little victim empathy, displayed lower mean scores on the Victim Empathy Scale than juvenile sex offenders who were evaluated to lack victim empathy or to have intact victim empathy. This study showed unstructured clinical judgment of moral development not to concur with test results. To improve decision-making processes regarding moral development, clinicians are advised to rely on instruments that assess moral development to inform clinical judgment. Further research is needed to examine which predictions are more accurate and to establish the predictive validity of moral development evaluations.

A sample of 2,190 sex offenders seen between 1966 and 2009 was compared on lifetime sexual and all offending, using charges, convictions, court appearances, and self-report as criteria. Of these various criteria, between 47.4% and 81.1% reoffended. Canadian child abuse reporting laws, which came into effect in the 1980s, were associated with increased charges and convictions for offenders, who victimized children, and with a reduction in their longer term reoffense rates. Immigration and population mobility, use of aliases, study follow-up time, and self-reported undetected sex crimes influenced reoffense rates. Results indicate that sex offenders continued to have short prison sentences and/or spend little or no time incarcerated during the latter part of the 20th century.

The recidivism rate of 203 people mandated by the courts to attend three community-based child sexual offender treatment programs (175 treatment cases and 28 assessment-only cases) was assessed and compared with a probation comparison group. The recidivism rate was 8.1% for all participants treated in the community-based programs and 5.2% for participants who completed treatment. The recidivism rate for program attendees was approximately half that of those in the probation comparison group. The drop-out rate for treatment appears to be relatively high (45%) and noncompletion was associated with higher recidivism. These results indicate significantly better outcomes for offenders receiving specialized treatment and are consistent with, and toward the lower end of, recidivism rates reported in local and international evaluation studies.

The application of criminal justice sanctions is often misguided by a failure to recognize the need for a comprehensive approach in the transformation of offenders into law-abiding citizens. Restorative justice is a growing movement within criminal justice that recognizes the disconnect between offender rehabilitative measures and the social dynamics within which offender reentry takes place. By using restorative approaches to justice, what one hopes of these alternative processes is that the offenders become reconnected to the community and its values, something rarely seen in retributive models in which punishment is imposed and offenders can often experience further alienation from society. In this study, the authors wish to examine factors that contribute to failed prisoner reentry and reintegration and explore how restorative reintegration processes can address these factors as well as the needs, attitudes, and perceptions that help construct and maintain many of the obstacles and barriers returning inmates face when attempting to reintegrate into society.

This article examines the effectiveness of diversionary restorative justice (RJ) conferences through the eyes of juvenile offenders. In Australia, Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) are based on Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming. Previous studies, although showing that RISE reported high levels of victim satisfaction and positive changes in the attitudes of offenders, also demonstrated that it has different outcomes for juvenile offenders depending on the type of offense with which they were charged. However, the effectiveness of RISE in terms of the offenders’ perceptions has not been addressed, and the impact of the offenders’ perceptions about RISE still remains under investigation. Using Australian data from RISE between 1995 and 1999, this article examines juvenile offenders’ perceptions on preventing reoffending, repaying the victim and society, and the degree of repentance. The data were taken from interviews with juvenile offenders to measure their perceptions after the court or RISE processing. A comparison of standard court processing effects and RISE on juvenile offending, including property crime, shoplifting, and violent offenses, was undertaken. The results from this study were somewhat inconsistent with previous research. In this study, there was no significant relationship between RJ conference and the offenders’ own perceptions on the prevention of future offending. However, it was found that there were treatment effects on repaying the victim, repaying society, and the degree of feeling repentance, and that younger offenders wanted to repay the victim/society and feel repentance.

This article describes two studies concerning the development of a new measure of criminal thinking, the CriminogenicThinking Profile (CTP), influenced by the construct of psychopathy, and traditional models of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). An experimental item pool based on verbalizations from offenders served as the pilot version of the instrument. Principal components analysis of the items resulted in a 62-item, eight-factor scale that was internally consistent. In terms of content, six of the resulting factors were conceptually related to psychopathy, one to CBT, and one to neutralization theory. The factor structure and internal reliability was supported by a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis. Initial support for the CTP’s convergent validity was indicated by its positive correlations with psychopathy and personality disorders associated with criminal, aggressive, and impulsive behaviors. The CTP’s divergent validity was supported by its inverse correlations with indices of healthy personality functioning. The CTP offers a somewhat different constellation of thinking patterns than those found on previously published criminal thinking instruments. The utility of the CTP to identify relevant cognitive targets for offender treatment is a recommended area of future research.

Differences in offense history, brain functioning, and psychological functioning of rape (n = 45) and molest offenders (n = 15) who were receiving psychiatric treatment while in prison were evaluated. Significant differences were found in each of these domains. Rape offenders were more likely to have histories of high violence offenses other than sexual offense, including murder, serious juvenile offenses, and both juvenile and adult sexual offenses. Rape offenders were more likely to show lower intellectual functioning and diffuse brain dysfunction associated predominantly with temporal and prefrontal brain cortices. Rape offenders were also more likely to display psychological functioning associated with illogical thinking and disordered attachment but less immature self-focus and fewer feelings of alienation than demonstrated by molest offenders. Implications for treatment and social policy for sexual offenders are suggested. Logistic regression demonstrated that these neuropsychological measures resulted in 71.7% accurate prediction and Rorschach measures resulted in 79.2% accurate prediction in differentiating rape from molest offenders. Implications for theoretical understanding of sexual offending are discussed.

A training partnership was established with the Florida Department of Corrections in 2003, and over the ensuing years, art therapy graduate student interns from Florida State University’s Graduate Art Therapy Program have been placed in local prisons at different times. Recently, the art therapy interns worked closely with the supervising psychologist in one prison to alleviate and redirect aggression by integrating cognitive-behavioral techniques with art therapy directives. The art therapy interns and the psychologist developed a curriculum using a combination of workbook exercises and art tasks to develop and increase the participants’ anger management skills, the Art Therapy Anger Management Protocol. This article provides an overview of art therapy in prison, the cognitive-behavioral approach to anger management with prison inmates, and how art therapy was used to support this approach. Examples of completed art tasks designed to correspond with the workbook curriculum are presented. Overall, this article presents the successful collaboration between the psychologist and art therapists and demonstrates how they facilitated improvement in the participants’ anger management skills through this program.