Abstract
Penitentiary system is an exemplary government institution, which has a complete control over the lives of individuals sentenced to spend a certain duration inside them. Depending on how this system is managed and the kind of services offered, it has the capability to modify a person’s path in life for the good or bad, or even leave the person unchanged. This is a point where correctional psychology comes in. It is defined as a subdiscipline of forensic psychology where by primary alongside applied psychological science or scientifically-oriented professional practice is implemented within the justice system. In order to inform the categorization, intervention, as well as management of criminals to minimize risks and upgrade the safety of the public.
This article explores the interaction and influence on correctional psychology or rather psychologists have had on penitentiary system. It also compares correctional psychology risk assessment models, the VRAG (Violence Risk Appraisal Guide) and RNR (The Risk Need Responsivity) and their effectiveness. RNR model is the mostly preferred instrument by correctional psychologists since it significantly influences offender rehabilitation programs. Evidence has been provided on how the rehabilitation programs can result to significant scaling down of recidivism and crime when principles within the RNR model are adhered to.
Introduction
In the history of crime and punishment, the idea of applying correctional psychology in the penitentiary systems in limiting crime just came recently. Correctional psychology is relatively a young field and throughout its growth, its purpose to crime and corrections can be seen. Correctional psychology here involves the usage of counselling and clinical methods on criminal alongside juvenile offenders in prisons and correctional systems (Neal, 2018). The responsible individuals who apply these practices are known as correctional psychologists, they also professionally take part in court activities, prison administrations, probations units, inspection of the prisoners’ behaviours, as well as programs related to rehabilitation.
According to studies, currently eleven million individuals are behind bars worldwide and almost on yearly basis thirty million people get in and out of the prisons. Individuals freed from penitentiary have a higher risk of repeating a criminal offense than those given punishment by the community. Normally, between one third and a half of offenders freed from jails reoffend within a span of two years. This tendency of a convicted person to reoffend is termed as recidivism (Bierie & Mann, 2017). This is a disease that correctional psychologists try as much as they can to eradicate. Additionally, they also give their best to help the offenders behind bars to change their behaviours in order to have the best outcome. Several psychological interventions are being applied in different penitentiary systems depending on the nation to improve the general end result of these convicted criminals.
Interaction or Involvement of Correctional Psychologists in the Penitentiary Systems
The interaction between psychology or psychologists and prisons is evident in myriads of ways. First, the most prevalent, they take part in clinical roles in prisons. Psychologists design, participate, and are in control of the treatment programs. Additionally, they also engage in crisis intervention as well as get involved during the therapeutic classes for the prisoners. Moreover, they offer clinical programming or other help to staff. Secondly, psychologists mostly serve as researchers and translators of correctional science, whether social, cognitive or other discotic subdisciplines. They might assess treatment programming, test hypotheses, and contribute in making policies (Bierie & Mann, 2017). In these instances, correctional psychologists might develop scientific reports for internal application.
All these involvements in prison are acknowledged as the roles of the correctional psychologists. Therefore, at one point this practitioner can take up one duty within the prison as a clinician or even take up many duties as possible as a psychological researcher, forensic and any other external to prison participating in work for the good of the correctional practice. These practitioners can opt to apply the following risk assessment models to help them improve on their roles within the custodian setting.
The Model of Effective Rehabilitation (The Risk Need Responsivity)
This is the most effective technique for the evaluation and treatment of those convicted. This model is based on three major principles; first, is the risk principle that explains on whom to aim, based on a person’s possibility of reoffending. This is key since interventions need to equal the possibility of reoffending. Effective rehabilitative interventions are supposed to be given to medium and high-risk instances, as low risk instances getting lesser intervention. In other words, the recidivism of an offender can be decreased if the degree of treatment offered to the criminal is directly proportional to the criminal’s risk to re-offend. Second, the need principle explains about what is supposed to be conducted, this calls for a lot of concentration of correctional treatment to be on the criminogenic needs instead of other needs that are not directly connected to the criminal behaviour. Third, responsivity principle explains on how the duty should be delivered, entailing both general and specific responsivity.
General responsivity encourages application of cognitive social learning techniques to influence one’s habit. Strategies of cognitive social learning are known to be the most successful means to teach individuals new behaviours regardless of the nature of the criminal (Viglione, 2019). The key correctional practices like prosocial actions, the right application of reinforcement and disapproval, alongside problem solving indicates the particular skills represented in a cognitive social learning method. Whether the main aim is to replace a criminal habit or control drug abuse, the best preferred method is the cognitive social learning. While specific responsivity fine tunes the cognitive behavioural intervention. It concentrates on strengths, personality, bio-social, learning styles and motivation of a person. Interventions should then focus on these elements, as they have the likelihood to facilitate or hamper treatment.
How RNR Has Promoted a Reduction in Reoffending
According to research, complying to all these three core principles has proven to be linked to decrease in reoffending. It has posted a result of seventeen percent positive difference in average recidivism between treated and untreated criminals when administered in penitentiary setting, and thirty-five percent difference when administered in community set ups (Viglione, 2019). In contrast, this increase in recidivism was contributed to the failure to comply to any of the three RNR principles.
Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) Model
In order to determine the possibility with which a male criminal would get charged for committing a new crime within a period of seven to ten years, this type of assessment model known as VRAG was used. It was first established in Canada and later applied in different nations to see its effectiveness. In this method, after the release of the criminals, they were followed and the degree with which they recommitted another violent crime was recorded. Pre-release features of such criminals were then linked to whether they had done a new illegal act. The features that were most likely linked to recidivism were put together to produce one score that would be applied to figure out the probability of intensely repeating criminal offenses (Quinsey, 2019). Looking at this technique, the estimation of predictive accuracy is complicated and sometimes has given rise to public disagreements.
Conclusion
Correctional psychologists have now found a better instrument used in dealing with any type of offender within the custodian setting. A big progress has been noted in their capability to reliably distinguish criminals in terms of risk and to help these criminals denote a positive helpful behaviour accepted by the society. Lost of these favourable developments have been significantly contributed by the application of risk need responsivity technique within the penitentiary system. This is not to declare that other techniques to risk assessment and interventions have not made any contribution. There exists, lots of valid criminal risk instruments that have been established from a non-theoretical viewpoint using highly complicated psychometric methods.
The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) is one of the instruments. Nevertheless, a small number of these risk assessment tools play a part in planning for effective intervention. The risk need responsivity technique has not only played part to the growth of the offender risk instruments that predict and the actuarial instruments but has also offered data meaningful for criminals’ treatment. When criminals can be assisted to drift away from offender’s lifestyle that mostly creates sorrow and suffering to themselves and their loved ones brings a societal gain. It also replicates the same gain to the offender himself or herself and those around them.
References
Bierie, D. M., & Mann, R. E. (2017). The history and future of prison psychology. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 23(4), 478.
Neal, T. (2018). Forensic psychology and correctional psychology: Distinct but related subfields of psychological science and practice. American Psychologist, 73(5), 651.
Quinsey, V. L. (2019). Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) and the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide–Revised (VRAG-R). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal Psychology. Web.
Viglione, J. (2019). The risk-need-responsivity model: How do probation officers implement the principles of effective intervention? Criminal Justice and Behavior, 46(5), 655-673.