After a guilty verdict - Treatment Programmes

Cann - Cognitive Skills Programmes

Aim: To find out if cognitive skills programmes were effective in terms of lower reoffending rates for a sample of women prisoners.

Sample: 

• 180 female offenders who started R&R or ETS between 1996 & 2000 (including 14 non-completers)
• Comparison group of 540 female offenders who didn't participate in these programmes
• All offenders were discharged in 1996-2000
• All spent at least a year in the community following a custodial sentence of 6 months or more.

IV - Whether offenders were on a programme or not & whether on R&R or ETS                DV -  Success of the programme - measured by reconviction rates between samples.

 Procedure:

• Expected 2yr re-conviction rates were calculated for all the women (who were matched on whether they were high, medium or low risk to be re-convicted.

Cann - Cognitive Skills Programmes

Procedure: (continued...)

Actual re-conviction rates were then calculated for 1 & 2 years after release.

Each individual programme (ETS or R&R) was also examined for effectiveness.

Results:

• No significant difference was found between the groups for actual re-conviction after 1 or 2 years

- After 1yr slightly higher for experimental group (18% vs 15%_

- After 2 years, experimental group was higher (37% vs 24%)

• Those on R&R were significantly more likely to reoffend
• No significant difference was found between treated group & comparison group on expected reconviction.

Ireland - Anger Management

Aim: To assess whether anger-management programmes work within a group of young male offenders

This was a quasi experiment

Procedure:

* 2 groups - exp. group of 50 pps receiving CALM, and control group of 37 pps not on a programme.

Each Pp was measured on the following:

• Their response to a cognitive behavioural interview - assessed by a psychologist (qual. data)
• Wing behavioural checklist (WBC) - completed by prison officers rating 29 behaviours (0-2 scale, quant. measure of aggression.
• Anger management Assessment (AMA) - A self report questionnaire on anger management.

Ireland - Anger Management

(continued...)

Results:

• Prisoners who had completed CALM rated themselves lower on the AMA questionnaire & were rated lower on the WBC by prison officers - there was no significant reduction in either of these measures in the control group.
• 92% of the treatment group showed improvements on at least one measure of aggression, 48% on two measures & 8% showed deteriation on both measures upon completing the course.

Conclusion: CALM programme seems effective & appears to help prisoners int he short term (as no reconviction data further down the line was collected).

Evaluative points:

• Reductionist - as only looks at effects of CALM intervention on aggressive behaviour.
• Quasi experiment - allows a cause & effect relationshi to be inferred, however, there's a lack of control over extraneous variables which could affect inmates anger (e.g. relationships with other inmates, family news etc)

Wheatley - Ear Acupuncture for drug rehabilitation

Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of ear acupuncture for treatment of substance misuse.

Sample:

* 350 prisoners in 6 high security prisons - they received acupuncture & the standard care programme (called FOCUS)

* A control group who didn't receive ear acupuncture but did get the standard care programme

Procedure:

* Two trained practitioners worked with groups of 10-15 prisoners in a relaxed setting.

* Fine needles were inserted into five acupuncture points in the ear - prisoners relaxed for a 40 minute period & then returned to normal duties.

* Quantitative and Qualitative data was collected.

Wheatley - Ear Acupuncture for drug rehabilitation

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Results: Qual. data...

• Prisoners reported better sleep, improved relaxation, better coping skills, reduced cravings for nicotine & health improvements.
• Prisoners made more effort to communicate with families and attend classes
• Staff commented that they could tell who had had acupuncture because the wing was calmer & there was less demand for healthcare services.

Quant. data...

• 70% reduction in drug related incidents from 6 months prior to 6 months post treatment
• 41% reduction in serious incident reports
• 42% reduction in positive drug testing results (mandatory)
• 33% reduction in positive drug testing results (voluntary).

Wheatley - Ear acupuncture for drug rehabilitation

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Evaluative points:

Reductionism/Holism - This study is reductionist as it only looks at the effect of acupuncture on treating drug misuse...However, it's stated that ear acupuncture is only a small part of a more holistic approach to treating drug addiction.

Large Sample and Pps being randomly assigned to groups - Allows greater generalisability of findings

Uses independant measures - Pp variables could potentially confound the results (e.g. motivation levels).

Control group - Allows us to see the effects of treatment in the experiment group and we can also compare the results of those not receiving treatment - can show how useful ear acupuncture is.