ABSTRACT
The Good Lives Model (GLM) of offender rehabilitation is a strength-based approach by virtue of its responsiveness to offenders’ core aspirations and interests, and its aim of providing them with the internal and external resources to live rewarding and offence-free lives. It is closely aligned with positive psychology (Linley and Joseph 2004) because of its stress on promoting offender well-being and its overall positive orientation to treatment, although it was developed independently of this perspective. We propose that rehabilitation theories are composed of three levels of ideas: (1) a set of general assumptions concerning the ethical values guiding rehabilitation, the nature of human beings, conception of risk, and the aims and purpose of rehabilitation practice; (2) a set of general aetiological (causal) assumptions that account for the onset and maintenance of offending; and (3) the practice implications of both of the above. In our view, it is helpful to think of the three levels as ordered in terms of their degree of abstractness, with the general aims and values providing a conceptual foundation for the subsequent levels (aetiology and practice). Each level of the GLM is discussed in greater detail below.
