Cognitive Self Change: How Offenders Experience the World and What We Can Do About It / Edition 1

by Jack Bush, Daryl M. Harris, Richard J. Parker

Overview

COGNITIVE SELF CHANGE

“The consensus amongst the leading researchers in the offender treatment area is that the comprehensive and sophisticated clinical methods the authors have derived for offender treatment are unsurpassed. Indeed, they have formed the basis for what is known as the core correctional practices for reducing anti-social behavior.”
Paul Gendreau, Professor Emeritus, University of New Brunswick

“Bush and colleagues’ phenomenologically based approach to offender rehabilitation is based explicitly on the stories they have collected from prisoners and probationers and is a welcome contribution to an academic literature that too often obfuscates the actual work involved in delivering help to the hardest to reach in the criminal justice system.”
Shadd Maruna, Ph.D., Dean of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice

Cognitive Self Change presents a practical guide to rehabilitation based on understanding the way individual offenders experience themselves and the world around them at the moment they offend. De-incentivizing criminal behavior and replacing it with self-empowered change are the keys to upending the traditionally antagonistic relationship between criminals and those meant to help them change. The authors, with their experience of working with offenders and implementing rehabilitation programs, have drawn together clinical and academic perspectives on the treatment of high-risk offenders, analyzing current approaches to treatment and the problems encountered in their application.

Cognitive Self Change rejects the traditional dichotomy of control versus treatment, devising instead a strategy that integrates both. Focusing on high-risk and “hard-core” offenders, not just those that are “ready to change,” they discuss why offenders offend, why they are seldom motivated to change, and why they often fail to engage in treatment. This leads to a strategy of communication that teaches offenders a set of skills they can use to change themselves, and that motivates them to do so.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470974810
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	05/23/2016
Series:	Wiley Series in Forensic Clinical Psychology Series , #53
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

JACK BUSH is the author of several correctional treatment programs, including Thinking for a Change (with Juliana Taymans and Barry Glick, National Institute of Corrections, 1997) and Decision Points (with Juliana Taymans, Charles Robinson, and Steve Swisher, 2014). He has developed and delivered Cognitive Self Change in several jurisdictions in America, the UK, Europe, and Australia.

DARYL M. HARRIS has worked with offenders within secure and community criminal justice and mental health systems. He has co-authored, managed, and delivered a range of accredited interventions. This has included supporting the implementation and delivery of Cognitive Self Change in Australia and the UK. Daryl is currently employed as a Clinical Psychologist by the Department of Forensic Psychiatry within the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, Wales; and is the Clinical Lead for the Wales Offender Personality Disorder Pathway.

RICHARD J. PARKER has worked with a range of jurisdictions in Australia with a wide range of offenders, including both adults and juveniles. He introduced Cognitive Self Change to Australia and has designed and implemented programs for sexual offenders, violent offenders, and substance abusers.

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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

Understanding Offending Behavior 1

Hard-Core 5

Cognitive Self Change 9

A Human Connection 12

Phenomenology and Self-reports: Some Preliminary Comments about Method 14

Summary of Chapters 16

1 The Idea of Criminal Thinking 25

Ellis, Beck, and Antisocial Schemas 33

Psychopathology or Irresponsibility 39

An Alternative Point of View 44

2 Offenders Speak their Minds 48

Seven Male Offenders 49

Three Young Women 58

Three Violent Mental Health Patients 62

Two Problematic Groups 64

Three British Gang Members 72

Conclusions and Interpretations 75

3 Cognitive–Emotional–Motivational Structure 78

The Idea of Conscious Agency: a Likely Story 79

Will and Volition, Self and Self-interest 82

The Model 85

Basic Outlaw Logic: Learning the Rewards of Criminal Thinking 89

Variations of Criminal Thinking 92

Conclusions and Implications 94

4 Supportive Authority and the Strategy of Choices 97

The Problem of Engagement 97

Conditions of Communication and Engagement 99

Supportive Authority 102

Rethinking Correctional Treatment 109

The Strategy of Choices 109

Final Comments 115

5 Cognitive Self Change 118

Four Basic Steps 121

Collaboration and the Strategy of Choices 139

Brief Notes on Program Delivery: Group Size, Duration and Intensity, Facilitator Qualifications and Training 141

6 Extended Applications of Supportive Authority 145

Why Offenders Need Help 145

Not Either/Or: Some Promising Examples 146

The System as the Intervention: Some Recent Examples 152

Supportive Authority, Revisited 157

An Idealistic Proposal (with modest expectations) 159

7 How We Know: Some Observations about Evidence 162

Introduction 162

Cognitive Self Change 164

The Significance of Subjectivity 165

Science and Subjectivity 169

Bibliography 175

Index 183