Criminal Psychology - Psychological Treatment

Psychological Treatment

Psychotherapy refers to a set of procedures or techniques used to help individuals or groups alter their maladaptive behavior, develop adaptive behavior or both. The behavior must be considered maladaptive by the individual however. Most Psychotherapies try to change cognitive constructs about ourselves, others, or both.

Behavior Therapy refers to learning-conditioning principles which derived from well-controlled laboratory environments. Behavior therapy has a number of advantages. Its been shown to be highly effective in changing and developing specific behaviors under controlled, experimental conditions. It is also economical as it does not require expensive professionals and can be immediately beneficial for controlling unmanageable behavior.

Behavior therapy also has a number of problems because it requires sophistication on the part of the therapist, firm environmental control, and a high degree of cooperation and commitment from those even remotely involved in the program. Transferring behavior techniques from the controlled psychological laboratory to the correctional institution, where there are bound to be numerous constraints, is an extremely difficult task.

The prison system makes treatment and rehabilitation difficult because of “criminalization” and “ prisonization” . Criminalization, inmates exchange and support each other's beliefs which creates a deviant culture. Prisonization is the process whereby inmates learn specific rules, general culture, and expectation of the prison community. These two learning processes are often in conflict with society.

Cognitive Therapy, “reality therapy” a form of self-control therapy developed by psychiatrist William Glasser (1965) and still commonly used in corrections today. Reality therapy is based on perspective that offenders must face reality no matter what happened to them in the past and take full responsibility for their behavior now. The main focus is on the irresponsible nature of crime and delinquency, rather than viewing them as the result of psychological sickness or disorder.

Constructive Therapy has emerged as a viable, rapidly growing approach across a wide area of cognitive therapies. The main idea is that individuals do not formulate static templates through which ongoing experience is filtered, but rather develop more dynamic constructs that are always subject to change as a result of new experiences.