Showing papers in "International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology in 1973"

The Probation Service in Hong Kong

Abstract: ~HE probation service in Hong Kong is undergoing a crucial test in the face of a mounting crime situation. Violence by youthful offenders has been rampant, and the upsurge of crime has given rise to much concern. Setting up short-term detention centres for young offenders is being considered to avoid having to commit them to prison. Though probation is regarded by some part of the public as too lenient, the probation officers in Hong Kong are fully convinced that a dedicated service will emerge and become indispensible in playing its part in the reformation of offenders.

A Behavior Modification Program in Nevada

Abstract: Background The Nevada Youth Training Center (NYTC) is a residential correctional facility for delinquent juvenile males in Elko, Nevada. In 1968, when this project was started, it housed about 125 youths. The institution was not walled, and the buildings were not kept locked. Yet the inmates presented a full range of criminal offenses, as NYTC was the only residential correctional institution in the state for male juvenile offenders. The staff maintained constant sight supervision over the boys. Wards described the Nevada prairie surrounding NYTC and the town of Elko as a &dquo;horizontal rather than vertical wall&dquo;. When staff felt that individual wards required stronger supervision to prevent escape, transfer to other facilities

Retarded Readers and Anti-social Young People: An English Study

Abstract: IN the area of delinquency, possibly since one study found a significantly higher average IQ amongst certain prisoners than amongst their guards, the Lombroso theory and its various heirs have been subject to increasing caution. Plainly, the volume of antisocial behaviour is now revealed as so vast, and its nature so varied, that the comparative thumbful of detected delinquency pulled from it is seen to be a doubtful sample. Refreshing as it is to see a book entitled Bright Delinquents’ the same general observation applies. The findings from studies of captive populations can too easily be used to feed prejudices rather than to aid in prevention. Increasingly we can expect that small studies of delinquent groups will be placed in context. I began writing this article one evening just after a party of residents from this village for the mentally handicapped arrived back from an outside trip. I was impressed by the fact that in this environment these severely mentally handicapped children and adults-none of whom could read beyond the six year levelbehaved in exemplary fashion. And I later discovered, that a pupil truanting from a normal school was at that moment smashing the windows of a bus near the entrance to this village. By contrast with the residents, the delinquent was a genius. We could not simply blame his intellectual limitations for his behaviour, and it would be refreshingly simple if we could extend to &dquo;the school failure&dquo; in general, the quotation applied to infants by one specialist in language development: &dquo;when words fail us violence serves us&dquo;. (R. Druce.)a But the range of violence is almost as wide as its

The Ganser Syndrome: A Contemporary Forensic Problem

Abstract: terized by what he called dVorbeiredend, or dpassing beyond (or past) the pointd What Ganser meant by this dpassing beyondd was that, though the patient gave an incorrect answer to a particular question, his answer indicated an understanding of the question which was asked Hence, for example, if the patient was shown a pair of scissors, he might have responded by saying that they were

Book Reviews : Casework in Probation. Mark Monger, London, Butterworth, 1972, 232 pp., £3.60

Abstract: Frequent mention is made of the effect of the media on impressionable minds (never one’s own, always somebody else’s). This book is an ex~ amination of the interrelationship between the phenomenon-the Mods and Rockers-the media, particularly the press; and the forms of social control, the courts and police. It is Cohen’s hypothesis that society needs a folk devil and that the media exaggerate the threat allowing the forces of social control to respond in moral panic and on a scale disproportionate to the scale of damage or fear created. This mechanism is vividly exposed by a combination of on-the-spot recording, generous quotations from

How to Reduce Needless Incarceration

Abstract: BOTH research’ and common sense suggest that incarceration may do actual harm by immersing human beings in a dependenceprone and criminally oriented counter-culture behind institution walls. Currently it costs $3,000 more to keep an offender in an institution than have him on supervision. There are moreover outlays for new institutions, losses in tax contributions and in uncollected court costs, damages caused by prison rioting aggravated by overcrowded conditions, etc., etc. More important still, there is the great psychological distress suffered by incarcerated offenders and their families, and the inevitable criminalizing influence of inmate sub-cultures found in any correctional institution, no matter how admirably administered the institution may be. The Saginaw Project research2 suggested that only about 20 per cent of offenders probably need to be incarcerated and that recidivism rates can actually be decreased by placing more offenders on probation. If the current 31.5 per cent of offenders sent to jail in Ohio were reduced to 20 per cent (i.e. 1,500 persons less) about three million dollars would be saved. Comparing the 26.9 per cent incarcerated in Ohio in 1971 with the 43 per cent incarcerated by the Federal District Courts for 1968, suggests that, in many jurisdictions, a high proportion of convicted offenders are unnecessarily institutionalized,3 3 and that imprisonment could probably often be reduced from an estimated average of 38 per cent of convicted criminals to the Saginaw Project figure of 19 per cent. In other words, we as a nation are presumably sending twice as many people to closed institutions as we really need to.&dquo; This represents an incredible waste in terms of money, manpower, facilities, and this infliction of human suffering is avoidable.

Writing Psychiatric Reports for the Court

Abstract: THE adversary setting of criminal trials is basic in Anglo-Saxon law. A psychiatrist may be called in by either the defense or the prosecution to testify about the defendant’s competency to stand trial, whether he was temporarily insane when he committed the crime-knew the difference between right and wrong-and/or whether he was suffering from an irresistible impulse at the time of his offense. Of course, it is up to the jury to accept or not the expert’s opinion. Aware of the adversary setting, the more experienced forensic psychiatrist may prefer not to commit his opinion in writing in order not to give the &dquo;other side&dquo; the advantage of knowing the report in advance of the trial and thus being able to prepare the cross-examination more carefully. Both legal counsels approach the trial with their expert witness: the psychiatrist. Neither know what the &dquo;other side&dquo; will bring out with respect to the central questions the experts must answer. Thus, the courtroom becomes a battlefield in which the psychiatrist acts as one of the soldiers. After the trial is over, the psychiatrist is paid and returns to his office. The attorneys feel satisfied that they have made their bid for justice on behalf of their respective clients, as they return to their offices in a mood determined by the verdict-indeed an attorney may even find that the case has launched him on to a political career. There is only one lone casualty left on the battlefield ; the defendant. The psychiatrist may yet have a role to play, even after a convic-

Street-corner Work with Aggressives

Abstract: ONE can work with aggression on three levels. The first might be called simple aggression. It is usually the product of combined called simple aggression. It is usually the product of combined factors. First, either one or both parents suffer from one or more major character defects, such as drink, instability, promiscuity, to mention just a few. Second, brutality, nagging, neglect, and rejection are common in the home. Third, the family is usually unstable and often broken. As a rule, this set of conditions is a lifelong, festering thing. The young child experiences neglect, violence, and instability. By the time he is an adolescent, the child prefers the street to home. He has learned to identify the parents’ character defects and often, in family scraps, berates the parents about these weaknesses. Unable to cope with rebellion, the parents react with increased rejection and brutality. On this level, the youngster’s rebellion is expressed with verbal rejection of all adult authority. On the second level, we find the youngster whose verbal aggression has involved him in such widespread difficulty with adult authority that he is unable to understand and handle it. He may try to beat up his father. He may break the school windows. He may destroy things just for destruction’s sake. He is no longer able to deal with the reality of his problem. On the third level, the aggressive has become the sociopath. This is the youngster who doesn’t appreciate anything anyone does for him. He has so primitive a personality structure that he cannot appreciate people. For him there are wants and ways to satisfy wants; people are only incidental means to the latter. The youngster is apparently incapable of attachment. Not all experts agree as to the possibility of his rehabilitation.