The Offender Personality Disorder Pathway: An exploration of the differences between offenders accessing a prison pathway service and a non-accessing population

ABSTRACT

As the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway continues to expand in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, the diversity and characteristics of offender populations accessing the pathway becomes an important area of study. This was the first controlled study to investigate the risk, personality, readiness to change and reflective functioning abilities of offenders accessing a range of OPD prison services and make comparisons with offenders from the wider non-OPD-accessing prison population. A total of 105 males participated. OPD-accessing groups included; a Progression Psychologically Informed Planned Environment (PIPE), a Provision PIPE and an OPD Outreach Service (OPD-OS). The study found significant differences between risk, personality pathology, difficulties maintaining change and reflective functioning abilities of offenders accessing the OPD services when compared to the wider prison population. The OPD-OS service caseload emerged as a particularly high risk and needs group. Further implications for service development and future directions are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Personality Disorder
• readiness to change
• reflective functioning

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all of the participants who took part in the research. In addition, a special thank-you to all the HMPPS and OPD staff who supported with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.