Recovery, desistance, and the role of procedural justice in working alliances with mentally ill offenders: a critical review

Abstract

Recovery and desistance in mentally ill offenders can be more complicated than in respectively general psychiatric or offender populations due to factors and processes on individual, contextual and structural levels. In this paper we focus on a specific element of the interplay between the individual and the contextual level; the working alliance. Beneficial working alliances during (quasi-)compulsory treatment and offender supervision can facilitate recovery and desistance in mentally ill offenders. These alliances are however characterized by a tension between care and control and further complicated by mentally ill offenders’ experiences of trauma and stigma. To our opinion, a procedurally just approach can counterbalance these two difficulties by setting a sound rehabilitative climate in which recovery and desistance can be facilitated in mentally ill offenders. We support our argument by a critical review of findings from theoretical papers and empirical research studies from psychological-psychiatric and legal-criminological scientific domains on the subjects of recovery, desistance, (quasi-)compulsory treatment processes, and procedural justice. A procedurally just approach can be valuable for policy, treatment as well as future research regarding recovery and desistance in mentally ill offenders.

Keywords:

• Procedural justice
• recovery
• desistance
• mentally ill offenders
• working alliance

Notes

1 To increase readability, ‘the mental health system’ is used throughout this paper to refer to both mental health care and social services.

2 Since this paper deals with interactions between MIO and both mental health and criminal justice professionals we prefer to describe these alliances more generally as ‘working alliances’ since ‘therapeutic (working) alliances’ refer more specifically to relationships with mental health professionals (Bordin 1979).

3 This heading is partly based on Wittouck et al. (2016).

4 A social identity consists of characteristics which define a social group (with at least two members). A personal identity consists of characteristics which differentiate a person from other persons (Hogg 2006).

5 As in the present paper, Andrews and Bonta (2010) based their definition of mental illness on the disorders listed in the DSM, thus including personality disorders. Antisocial personality disorder, which is closely related to offending behaviour, was the most frequent diagnosis in their review.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ghent University [BOF14/G0A/006].