ABSTRACT
The offender provides the starting-point for a discussion of the role of psychology in attempts to prevent crime. As detailed in Chapter 2, there are a range of theories of crime which have, to a greater or lesser degree, a psychological component. These psychological theories, mainly of classical and positivist persuasion, are principally of a ‘dispositional’ nature: that is they seek to explain crime in terms of biological, cognitive, behavioural, or social differences between criminals and non-criminals. Taking this position it follows that in order to prevent crime, it is necessary to change the criminal’s disposition towards offending. It is here that the therapist, particularly the clinical psychologist, comes into his or her own. Drawing on training, experience, and theories of psychopathology, vast numbers of clinical treatment programmes have been conducted with the aim of rehabilitating offenders back into ‘normal’ society. These treatments can be categorized in several ways: the focus may be on a treatment which follows a particular psychological theory such as behavioural approaches generally (E.K.Morris and Braukmann 1987) or social learning theory particularly (Nietzel 1979); the treatment may be aimed at a particular age group, such as juvenile delinquents (Burchard and Burchard 1987); or treatment may be for a particular type of offence, such as violent crime (Stuart 1981). A further consideration is the setting in which the intervention takes place, and it is this which I have used to structure the present discussion. With an emphasis on setting it is possible to place treatment in context, looking at not only the treatment programmes, but also the organizations in which treatment takes place. The weight of studies is too great to cover exhaustively here, so I have adopted the strategy of selecting examples to give an overall picture of the field of offender rehabilitation.
