Offender Rehabilitation: Current Problems and Ethically Informed Approaches to Intervention

Abstract

Rehabilitation programmes are widely offered to offenders in custodial and community settings around the world. Despite the existence of a large evidence base that identifies features of effective practice, levels of programme integrity remain low and are widely believed to undermine successful rehabilitation. In this paper it is suggested that conceptualising rehabilitation as a moral activity which involves assisting offenders to make better ethical decisions is one way to address some of the difficulties in the delivery of rehabilitation programmes that potentially lead to low levels of integrity, thereby increasing effectiveness.

Keywords:

• Offender Rehabilitation
• Values
• Ethics
• Programme Integrity

Notes

¹This is not to say that the presence or absence of such skills differentiates between offenders and non-offenders; or that all offenders lack these skills either wholly or in part. Rather, persistent offenders fail to apply social problem-solving skills due to difficulties with such things as problem recognition, selecting and generating solutions, and understanding the likely outcomes of particular behaviour.

²This is a model that, in essence, suggests that higher risk offenders should receive more intensive programmes, aimed at areas of need that are directly associated with their offending.

³Notable exceptions to this can be found in programmes such as Aggression Replacement Therapy (Goldstein et al. 2004), and Moral Reconation Therapy (Armstrong 2003), but both of these programmes fail to articulate a coherent model of morality, values, or ethical decision making (beyond that of Piaget and Kohlberg).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Day

Andrew Day is Professor of Clinical and Forensic Psychology at Deakin University in Australia. He is the current director of the Deakin Forensic Psychology Centre