Careful reading of the literature on the psychology of criminal conduct and of prior reviews of studies of treatment effects suggests that neither criminal sanctioning without provision of rehabilitative service nor servicing without reference to clinical principles of rehabilitation will succeed in reducing recidivism. What works, in our view, is the delivery of appropriate correctional service, and appropriate service reflects three psychological principles: (1) delivery of service to higher risk cases, (2) targeting of criminogenic needs, and (3) use of styles and modes of treatment (e.g., cognitive and behavioral) that are matched with client need and learning styles. These principles were applied to studies of juvenile and adult correctional treatment, which yielded 154 phi coefficients that summarized the magnitude and direction of the impact of treatment on recidivism. The effect of appropriate correctional service (mean phi = .30) was significantly (p <.05) greater than that of unspecified correctional service (.13), and both were more effective than inappropriate service (−.06) and non-service criminal sanctioning (−.07). Service was effective within juvenile and adult corrections, in studies published before and after 1980, in randomized and nonrandomized designs, and in diversionary, community, and residential programs (albeit, attenuated in residential settings). Clinical sensitivity and a psychologically informed perspective on crime may assist in the renewed service, research, and conceptual efforts that are strongly indicated by our review.

Does correctional treatment work? a clinically relevant and psychologically informed meta-analysis *

The Development of Offending and Antisocial Behaviour from Childhood: Key Findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, 411 South London males have been followed up from age 8 to age 32. The most important childhood (age 8-10) predictors of delinquency were antisocial child behaviour, impulsivity, low intelligence and attainment, family criminality, poverty and poor parental child-rearing behaviour. Offending was only one element of a larger syndrome of antisocial behaviour that arose in childhood and persisted into adulthood. Marriage, employment and moving out of London fostered desistance from offending. Early prevention experiments are needed to reduce delinquency, targeting low attainment, poor parenting, impulsivity and poverty.

The Twelfth Jack Tizard Memorial Lecture. The development of offending and antisocial behaviour from childhood: key findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.

A meta-analysis of 58 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) on the recidivism of adult and juvenile offenders confirmed prior positive findings and explored a range of potential moderators to identify factors associated with variation in treatment effects. With method variables controlled, the factors independently associated with larger recidivism reductions were treatment of higher risk offenders, high quality treatment implementation, and a CBT program that included anger control and interpersonal problem solving but not victim impact or behavior modification components. With these factors accounted for, there was no difference in the effectiveness of different brand name CBT programs or generic forms of CBT.

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The positive effects of cognitive–behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment

Few psychological concepts evoke simultaneously as much fascination and misunderstanding as psychopathic personality, or psychopathy. Typically, individuals with psychopathy are misconceived as fundamentally different from the rest of humanity and as inalterably dangerous. Popular portrayals of "psychopaths" are diverse and conflicting, ranging from uncommonly impulsive and violent criminal offenders to corporate figures who callously and skillfully manuever their way to the highest rungs of the social ladder. Despite this diversity of perspectives, a single well- validated measure of psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991; 2003), has come to dominate clinical and legal practice over recent years. The items of the PCL-R cover two basic content domains--an interpersonal-affective domain that encompasses core traits such as callousness and manipulativeness and an antisocial domain that entails disinhibition and chronic antisocial behavior. In most Western countries, the PCL-R and its derivatives are routinely applied to inform legal decisions about criminal offenders that hinge upon issues of dangerousness and treatability. In fact, clinicians in many cases choose the PCL-R over other, purpose-built risk-assessment tools to inform their opinions about what sentence offenders should receive, whether they should be indefinitely incarcerated as a "dangerous offender" or "sexually violent predator," or whether they should be transferred from juvenile to adult court. The PCL-R has played an extraordinarily generative role in research and practice over the past three decades--so much so, that concerns have been raised that the measure has become equated in many minds with the psychopathy construct itself (Skeem & Cooke 2010a). Equating a measure with a construct may impede scientific progress because it disregards the basic principle that measures always imperfectly operationalize constructs and that our understanding of a construct is ever-evolving (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). In virtually any domain, the construct-validation process is an incremental one that entails shifts in conceptualization and measurement at successive points in the process of clarifying the nature and boundaries of a hypothetical entity. Despite the predominance of the PCL-R measurement model in recent years, vigorous scientific debates have continued regarding what psychopathy is and what it is not. Should adaptive, positive-adjustment features (on one hand) and criminal and antisocial behaviors (on the other) be considered essential features of the construct? Are anxious and emotionally reactive people that are identified as psychopaths by the PCL-R and other measures truly psychopathic? More fundamentally, is psychopathy a unitary entity (i.e., a global syndrome with a discrete underlying cause), or is it rather a configuration of several distinguishable, but intersecting trait dimensions? Although these and other controversies remain unresolved, theory and research on the PCL-R and alternative measures have begun to clarify the scope and boundaries of the psychopathy construct. In the current comprehensive review, we provide an integrative descriptive framework--the triarchic model--to help the reader make sense of differing conceptualizations. The essence of this model is that alternative perspectives on psychopathy emphasize, to varying degrees, three distinct observable (phenotypic) characteristics: boldness (or fearless dominance), meanness, and disinhibition. The triarchic framework is helpful for clarifying and reconciling seemingly disparate historical conceptions, modern operationalizations, and contemporary research programs on psychopathy. Our review addresses what psychopathy is, whether variants or subtypes exist (i.e., primary and secondary, unsuccessful and successful), the sorts of causal influences that contribute to psychopathy, how early in development psychopathy can validly be identified, and how psychopathy relates to future criminal behavior and treatment outcomes. Despite controversies and nuances inherent in each of these topics, the current state of scientific knowledge bears clear implications for public policy. Policy domains range from whether psychopathic individuals should be held responsible for their criminal actions to whether employers should screen job candidates for tendencies toward psychopathy. In many cases, the findings we review converge to challenge common assumptions that underpin modern applications of psychopathy measures and to call for cautions in their use. For example, contemporary measures of psychopathy, including the PCL-R, appear to evidence no special powers in predicting violence or other crime. Instead, they are about as predictive as purpose-built violence-risk-assessment tools, perhaps because they assess many of the same risk factors as those broader-band tools. Specifically, the PCL-R and other psychopathy measures derive most of their predictive utility from their "Factor 2" assessment of antisocial and disinhibitory tendencies; the "Factor 1" component of such measures, reflecting interpersonal and affective features more specific to psychopathy, play at best a small predictive role. Similarly, current measures of psychopathy do not appear to moderate the effects of treatment on violent and other criminal behavior. That is, an increasing number of studies suggest that psychopathic individuals are not uniquely "hopeless" cases who should be disqualified from treatment, but instead are general "high-risk" cases who need to be targeted for intensive treatment to maximize public safety. Misunderstandings about the criminal propensities and treatability of individuals achieving high scores on measures like the PCL-R have been perpetuated by professionals who interpret such high scores in a stereotypic manner, without considering nuances or issues of heterogeneity. A key message of our review is that classical psychopathy, whether measured by the PCL-R or other measures, is not monolithic; instead, it represents a constellation of multiple traits that may include, in varying degrees, the phenotypic domains of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. Measures such as the PCL-R that do not directly assess features of low anxiety, fearlessness, or boldness more broadly tend to identify heterogeneous subgroups of individuals as psychopathic. As a consequence, efforts to apply one-size-fits-all public policies to psychopathic individuals may be doomed to failure. In aggregrate, these conclusions may help to shed light on what psychopathy is, and what it is not, and to guide policy interventions directed toward improved public health and public safety. Language: en

Psychopathic Personality Bridging the Gap Between Scientific Evidence and Public Policy

The Reasoning and Rehabilitation Project comprised an experimental test of the efficacy of an unorthodox intervention program in the rehabilitation of high-risk adult probationers The program was derivedfrom a series of sequential studies of the principles of effective correctional programs These studies indicated that many offenders evidence deficits in cognitive skills which are essential for pro-social adjustment and that training in these skills is an essential ingredient of effective correctional programs Compared to regular probation and life skills training, cognitive training provided by probation officers led to a major reduction in re-arrest rates and incarceration rates among adult high-risk probationers

Crystal D. Ewles

Papers

Reasoning and Rehabilitation