ABSTRACT

How does the criminal process affect the psychological wellbeing of defendants? Which decisions, behaviors, and outcomes within the process enhance their wellbeing, and which are those that jeopardize it? Those are some of the questions that Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ), a field of inquiry that studies the law’s impact on psychological wellbeing, presents. Adjunct to TJ is Positive Criminology (PC), a newly defined school encompassing diverse criminological models and theories that identify positive factors that may help offenders rehabilitate. Looking at the same criminal justice process PC presents distinct, yet similar questions: What are the rehabilitative programs that can best enhance defendants’ growth and desistance from crime? What does research tell us about the links between different positive experiences and offenders’ rehabilitation?

The goal of this chapter is to outline the interconnections between TJ and PC and to explore what each one of these sibling perspectives can give to and take from the other (see also Wexler, 2013). We argue that PC may be seen as a vineyard from which TJ can borrow therapeutic techniques (‘wine’) that may be used by legal actors. Concurrently, PC can learn from TJ about TJ-friendly and unfriendly legal structures, or ‘bottles’ – structures in which PC practices can thrive or be stifled. On a more abstract level, we argue that TJ and PC share a similar ideological framework. While TJ applies to legal practices and rules and PC relates to criminological research and practices, both approaches highlight the therapeutic effects of some elements in order to increase their use, while identifying the anti-therapeutic effects of others, aiming to minimize their use.