Showing papers in "International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology in 1975"

Using Social Isolation to Change the Behaviour of Disruptive Inmates

Abstract: SOLITARY confinement has been a traditional penological procedure in many countries throughout long periods. In Western society today, its primary application is for the segregation and punishment of dangerous or recalcitrant inmates. In Canada, for example, an inmate may be sentenced to up to 30 days of isolation in what is called a Special Correctional Unit (SCU), if a Disciplinary Board finds him guilty of violating Penitentiary Service regulations. The SCU may also involve a loss of a number of privileges including restriction of exercise to a minimum of one hour per day. This is an often invoked penalty: for example, the British Columbia Penitentiary with slightly over 500 inmates, has 30 to 40 SCU cells constantly in use. Interestingly, while there is some evidence that isolation and the reduction of sensory input which accompanies it may produce changes in certain aspects of personality (e.g., Gendreau, Ecclestone & Knox, 1973; Scott & Gendreau, 1969; Taylor, 1961), there appear to have been no systematic attempts to use SCU time to facilitate the rehabilitation of the individual. This may be due partly to the fact that traditional practices traditionally go unexamined; but if, as most professionals and laymen now agree,

Behavioral Treatment of Child Abuse

Abstract: CHILD abuse is a major concern in our society. Although its unfortunate consequences are usually dealt with through the legal and public health systems, its prevention is primarily a concern for mental health professionals. Little is known about the development of child abuse. If the antecedents of the behavior could be determined, steps toward its control and possible prevention could follow. One possible explanation stems from a behavioral viewpoint. Child abuse can be seen

Helping the Victims

Abstract: Introduction In order to protect society, the main emphasis of the British penal system has traditionally been upon the detection of crime and the punishment of the offender. Recently, a more enlightened attitude has been adopted by such organisations as the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), which aim to support the offender in an effort to prevent recidivism. Very little attention, however, has been paid by either voluntary or statutory bodies to assess the needs of the victims of crime. The main role of the victim at law has been as a source of evidence to secure a conviction against the offender, and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board only provides recompense in cases of actual physical injury, a small minority of victims. In this setting, the Bristol Victims Support Scheme was concerned with the initial twofold aim of identifying the unmet needs of the victims, and at the same time, to research the subject.’ 1

A Study of Incest

Abstract: at Billerica, Massachusetts. Attempts were made to follow-up all involved members of the family: not an easy task due to family disruption, resistance to keeping interviews, and at times extreme evasion of questioning. The difficulty in obtaining the facts pretrial is considerable, with all parties hesitant to admit their guilt. Thus, it was found that a case must be followed through the lower and higher courts and finally to prison to obtain a fuller picture of what had happened. Often, only after conviction, does

Treatment of Violent Sex Offenders

Abstract: approaches: the treatment of violent offenders and the nonviolent. It should be stated very clearly that most sex offenders are not of the violent variety and most are fairly passive individuals who do not hurt others, but are involved in the expression of their own deviant sexual urges. Examples of the non-violent offender are: the exhibitionist, the voyeur, most pedophiles, most homosexuals (who continue to be offenders in most jurisdictions though they are no longer classified as sexual deviants in the American Psychiatric Association nomenclature). The assaultive sex offender is the violent one that concerns us here. These usually include the rapists, some pedophiles, lust murderers and some homosexuals who are aggressive and assaultive. The purpose of this paper is to outline treatment programs for the violent sex offender and not to discuss the psychodynamics of or to describe the non-violent offender. Initially, the violent sex offender is incarcerated. He is locked up to keep him away from society, to keep him from perpetrating his violent acts on innocent citizens.

Basic Problems of Military Psychiatry: Delayed Reaction in Vietnam Veterans

Abstract: In the beginning of this paper, I wish to describe two instances in which committing violence against civilians in the Vietnam War appears to have been causally related to the development of significant, chronic psychiatric symptoms in the soldiers who committed the acts. In the third instance, the killing of a combatant who was discovered to be a woman appears to have produced significant symptoms. It is not a novel observation that war produces psychiatric symptoms, or that killers become traumatized as do other witnesses, but I believe it is timely to emphasize the existence of this &dquo;syndrome&dquo; in this war, so that others may have a heightened suspicion of the possible role of this type of trauma in the causation of psychiatric symptoms seen in those who have served in Vietnam. All soldiers described here came to me when I served as a psychiatrist in the United States Naval Disciplinary Command, a maximum security prison for Navy and Marine Corps prisoners located at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Legacy of Violence in Northern Ireland

Abstract: more recently a wave of vicious sectarian assassinations has occurred. The various para-military groups emulate each other closely, and in addition to fighting each other, the various factions frequently have violent bloody feuds among themselves. Throughout there has been marked intimidation of people with a resulting massive movement of population, as described by the Community Relations Research Unit.1 Rioting has been a feature of Belfast life for the past 150 years. Prior to 1832, civil disturbances were common in rural areas in Ireland.z Some of the riots in Belfast have been described in considerable detail. and have occurred approximately every decade or SO.3.4.5.6.1 The pattern of these earlier riots tended to be repetitive as regards the following factors; they were seasonal, occurring usually in July and August; the precipitating factors were frequently processions by those of one religious persuasion claiming territorial rights by marching through the districts of the other religious group; they were always sectarian in origin; army and police intervention occurred and the riot was usually settled fairly rapidly. The disturbances of the past six years have differed in several respects, namely, they have been excessively prolonged and show no real sign yet of remitting; they have been much more extensive both as regards the area of the city involved and as to the fact that several other towns and cities in Northern Ireland have experienced severe civil disturbance; there has been a very large number of people killed, injured and arrested, and

Medico-legal Problems in Peru

Abstract: Peru is a large, sparsely populated country with a wide range of ethnic strains among its 14,000,000 inhabitants. While the national language is Spanish, as many as 60 per cent of the population speak Quechua, one of the original indigenous tongues and which has a construction and content that is not well adapted to the exigencies of modern communication.3 Good roads are comparatively few, so that to a marked extent, the country still remains divided into three basic areas, the coastal region, which is mainly arid, with the population concentrated in a few urban centers; the highland region, with a predominantly Indian, Quechua-speaking population scratching a precarious existence out of the soil under

Some Basic Principles of Offender Therapy: I

Abstract: The Economic Approach ONE can afford to regard psychotherapy as luxury only if suffering and interest in one’s mind are dismissed as luxuries. Therapy becomes a necessity when we are faced with a severe handicap. A man in prison suffers from serious stress, longing for a full life in freedom, and the task of therapy is to help him to gain this full life by developing a better ability to adjust. Our first principle, that of using a sober realistic approach springs from this need. Actually this principle can be subdivided further into two rules: (a) aim for the simplest solution and (b) aim for the most economic solution. Both are practical and goal oriented. The first one concerns the disturbance, the second the effort involved. The economic approach relates the time spent and the suffering of the patient to the results likely to be achieved. The results do not necessarily depend on the severity of the disturbance. Thus both aspects of the principle, i.e. the search for the economic and the simple solution, are intertwined. Our principle of seeking the simplest solution cannot be taken for granted. A &dquo;case&dquo; is not something per se, but to quite a degree what

Psychiatric Treatment of Violent Patients in Private Practice

Abstract: IN general, the layman conjures up a picture of a violent person, one who has murdered, in terms of what has always been a fearful stereotype. For some the picture might follow a line of a hardened criminal, one for whom the life of another has always meant little. Others might see the violent person as being severely mentally ill, constantly expressing agitation, hearing voices, seeing visions of imaginary enemies and opening a coat with all types of weapons and implements of death. The average person can fluidly deal with his feelings by evaporating the image and changing the fantasied subject. However, a therapist cannot get off so easily. He is expected by others and himself to have all his fears under control, to be capable of handling each and every type of person, including violent ones, and to be professional and dispassionate about all people. Well, it doesn’t work that way. Therapists become terrified at the idea of treating or even evaluating criminals, especially murderers. Some will even draw the line at treating police officers because they carry guns, are rough and tough and it is possible that in a state of treatment transference one might become physically abusive. Besides, they have contact with violent others, the undesirables, so let’s eliminate them! Nowhere else in the treatment arena is &dquo;therapist’s fear&dquo; so highly rationalized. The violent patients are considered untreatable. They fall into the same poor prognosis wastebasket as homosexuals, drug addicts, the elderly and alcoholics. This paper will explore some of the problems and techniques of treating persons with a violent history on a private out-patient basis. It will utilize clinical incidents and my experience. A search of literature on this subject failed to offer me much help in writing this paper since most studies concern inpatient care and the relative merits and effectiveness of various types of tranquilizers or somatic therapies. Some articles raised questions about the advisability of treatment at all. Most of the papers subtly reflected fear about close treatment contact with violent patients, particularly in the lonely confines of a private practice office where there

Dyslexia and Delinquency: A New Dyslexia Screening Test

Abstract: THE belief in the single factor causation of human behavior has long been discredited. Human behavior is a complicated phenomenon, and any simple condition, or state, represents the final common path of many factors acting in concert to produce the observed event. Dyslexia is such a phenomenon. The majority of young people learn the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic during their pre-adolescent years, but this fact should not mislead one into thinking that the acquisition of these three basic tools represents simple and uncomplicated growth stages for everyone. Some youngsters who are unable to express themselves adequately through the medium of spoken language are indeed handicapped. They can be observed employing an inarticulate physical language, frequently through a friendly slap, a subtle shove, or an ambivalent punch, all accompanied by an appropriate facial expression, by a momentarily fixed stance, or by bodily posturizing. Dyslexia means, literally, difficulty in dealing with words. Related terms are alexia, meaning the absence of any word sense, and a term used in a famous monograph by James Hinshelwood in 1917. He wrote of Congenital Word-Blindness, or alexia, as a genetically determined entity. Dysgraphia and agraphia refer to impediments in writing or spelling, and dyscalculia to a marked defect in dealing with mathematical computation. Another term, strephosymbolia, meaning confusion or twisting in the use of symbols both verbal and numerical, was introduced by Samuel Orton, a neurologist in New York, who perhaps, more than any other American made signal contributions toward the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia. In the Boston area, his outstanding student, Dr. Edwin Cole, trained a number of special teachers for the perceptually handicapped, and used his special insights in the retraining and rehabilitation of many brain-damaged patients. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ lists &dquo;Specific Learning Disturbance&dquo; in the group of disorders entitled &dquo;Special Symptoms&dquo; (306)-a diagnostic classification applying most

The Douglas Inch Centre for Forensic Psychiatry

Abstract: FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY CENTRES in the United Kingdom have each developed along different lines, depending on the major needs of the area in which they were developing. In the West of Scotland-one of the first regions to establish this sub-speciality-there was, in the immediate post war years, a strongly felt need for psychiatric involvement in prisons and borstals, particularly the latter, where the younger age group would be more accessible to psychiatric treatment. Because of the relatively small numbers in the Scottish prison system it seemed inadvisable to establish a psychiatric service outside the National Health Service, but rather to obtain such help from Health Service Psychiatric Units, preferably the teaching departments. This concept of integrating psychiatry in the penal system with the National Health Service led to the establishment of posts in forensic psychiatry in the Department of Psychological Medicine of Glasgow University, based at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital. To begin with the holders of such posts were seconded to prison and borstal institutions, but it was visualised from the start that a Centre for forensic psychiatry would be established which would offer not only psychiatric work in institutions, but a community service of forensic psychiatry. In May, 1964 this object was achieved when the Forensic Psychiatric Clinic in Glasgow was opened. The Clinic was established in a terrace house near the centre of the city-a site which has proved to have many advantages, and which emphasised the community orientation of the work. Later, in 1969, this was called the Douglas Inch Clinic, to commemorate Dr. T. Douglas Inch who pioneered forensic psychiatry in Scotland and who originated the idea of such a clinic. After another five years the clinic celebrated its 10th birthday by a move to somewhat larger premises quite near its original location and in a similar type of house. There was then another change of nameviz to substitute the word Centre for Clinic-a name more descriptive of the role that had been established in the community.

A School for Truants

Abstract: THE problem of facilities for the adolescent school non-attender has been apparent to the staff of the Douglas Inch Centre during their years of work in the field of delinquency in Scotland. It was evident that many young people were sent to residential establishments for non-attendance of one kind or another rather than for having committed any statutory criminal offence. Furthermore the nearer the adolescent was to his sixteenth birthday-the official school leaving age-the less likely were other community based day-centres for maladjusted children liable to accept him, mainly because of long waiting lists for placements. If acting out behaviour was also part of the problem, this again was a contraindication. In addition when treating those young people where school refusal could be clinically diagnosed, it was frequently found that they could be brought to the stage of regular Centre attendance, but in some cases the return to their neighbourhood school, generally a very large comprehensive establishment, seemed to be too great a step and treatment frequently broke down or became stagnant. Other adolescents referred for disruptive behaviour rarely exhibited this in the standard interview situation or in relaxed conditions and therefore made accurate assessment difficult without

Compulsory Treatment in Soviet Psychiatric Hospitals: A View from the Inside

Abstract: IT is a matter of argument at present among Western psychiatrists whether socio-political dissidents im the Soviet Union are being detained in psychiatric facilities for non-medical reasons. The question has been raised whether this could

Drinking Habits in Scotland

Abstract: to alcohol misuse in Scotland.&dquo; Whatever may be the origins-historical, economic or sociological-of a high Scottish rate of alcohol consumption, the present position is that heavy drinking occurs in areas of urban deprivation and on the housing estates in the Clydeside conurbation, in association with Highland hospitality and friendship, and as one of the few known forms of leisure activity in many parts of the country. The liberal consumption of spirits has been traditional in Scotland and the male drinking style usually involves &dquo;a hauf and