ABSTRACT
In this book we have understood treatment readiness as the presence of characteristics (states or dispositions) within either the client or the therapeutic situation that are likely to promote engagement in therapy, and thereby are likely to enhance therapeutic change. According to this definition, behaviour change in relation to persistent offending behaviour requires the presence of certain internal and external readiness conditions. It follows from this that when working with those offenders who are assessed as ‘not ready’ to change (and who may have previously been regarded as ‘resistant’, ‘untreatable’ or ‘challenging’), a useful starting point will be to identify those internal and external conditions that are required for engagement in a rehabilitation programme to occur, and then modify these as required. Given that our definition of readiness incorporates client, programme and setting factors, increasing readiness can occur by modifying any or all of these factors. In this chapter we discuss each of these in turn, and then review the evidence for one of the most widely used approaches to improving levels of offender motivation: motivational interviewing.
