Assault in the City: Treatment - Essay Example

Assault in the Treatment Affiliation: Assault in the Treatment Prison systems separate criminals from the general society and keep them for correctional purposes. There are different facilities for adults and children (juvenile). A juvenile is a criminal below 18 years and is separated from adults to avoid bad influence from adult offenders. Both correction systems are similar because they use incarceration as a method to punish offenders. Inmates in both systems are punished for their crimes, depending on the magnitude of the offence. In both systems, the offenders serve the maximum sentence given and no special treatment is given as pertains attending prison’s daily routines. In addition, both facilities focus on punishing the offence and behavior correction, only that it is done differently in juveniles because the minors are more sensitive that the adults. A major difference is that rehabilitation is a key concept in juveniles while adults are given more incentive programs to change their behaviours. Juveniles have rehabilitation facilities such as programs that reduce violence, low staff student ratios and cognitive restructuring programs that help the offenders identify thinking errors. The adult facilities on the other hand focus on stringent punishment and offer few rehabilitation initiatives. Another difference is that adult systems have more facilities to detain offenders such as private jails, minimum/maximum security jails. Both correctional facilities shouldn’t be undermined especially the lenient juvenile because the approach assists in rehabilitation. Adult facilities are not as bad as portrayed by the media. Prisoners have sufficient assistance for rehabilitation and personal growth e.g. education and vocational training. Treatment for both juvenile and adult sex offenders is grouped into 5 categories. A biological therapy is a treatment given to pedophiles who have a long history of offences. The treatment involves suppressing the androgen levels to reduce sexual arousal. Anti-androgenic medicine is administered to decrease the sexual drive. The success rate is high since the offender’s sex drive becomes too low to facilitate sex. Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy treatment involves counseling. They focus on identifying and resolving conflicts of early life such as trauma, that lead to antisocial behavior. Therapy has high success rate of about 80% compared to other treatments. Family therapy is community based treatment programs for families with incest. The treatment combines individual and group therapies to change behavior. The treatment has a low success rate because of poor supervision by prison authorities and lenience of family members to the offender. Cognitive-behavioral therapy treatments teach the sex offender how to identify and change their inaccurate beliefs, and teach them the correct ways to control their bad impulses and behaviours. Behavioral techniques such as altering maladaptive thinking are used for correction. Relapse prevention programs help offender to identify cognitive and behavioral patterns that precede sexual abuse. The method enhances the self-management concept and provides supervision. The success rate is high because offenders change behaviours through voluntary self-conviction ways. The process involved in assessing risk and amenability to treatment use of assessment tools to measure risk and amenability. Risk assessment tools are used to measure and tally items, calculate overall risk score in regard with the appropriateness of a correction facility’s placement/detention of an offender within a given locale. Items and scores are given for a certain locale, based on a combination of local data about re-arrest incidences, local values and re-institutionalization. This is done in regard with the acceptable levels of risk from offenders. The measures have a simple logic i.e. the more risk factors, the high the probability to re-offend and the more justification to detain/arrest the offender. These actuarial instruments are very influential in predicting re-arrest. Therefore, an actuarial decision-making system can be used in the reform system. The stakeholders identify the appropriate indicators of risk and identify corrective measure e.g. detention, to increase collaboration. Introducing risk assessments address the problem of disproportionate confinement in a society. Assessment process uses tools that combine risk-and-need approach and goes beyond calculating scores of re-offending. It includes protective factors assessment/treatment needs. The approach assumes that risk can be lowered by specific interventions/ community monitoring. The approach goes beyond putting offenders in high/low risk groups. It enables an evaluator to use assessment results to identify specific treatment interventions to individual offenders rather than a binary decision concerning the need to incarcerate. The relevant issues that forensic psychologists need to address mainly focus on professionalism, legal regulation and ethical principles. Professional issues include responsibility that strives for honesty, accuracy and truth in the science, teaching and practicing forensic psychology. Psychologists should be Impartial and fair in providing expert opinion to be relied on by decision makers. Competence in forensic psychology is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Competence is the ability to person work with skill and expertise in a given field. All psychologists must be competent so that they can provide sound expert opinions. Legal considerations and regulations require in-depth understanding of legal system, people’s right, knowledge of scientific foundation for opinion and testimonies. Ethical issue to address include conflict of interest, threat of independence of expert opinion and patient confidentiality. A psychologist can address these issues in different ways. First, obtaining the relevant education qualifications and continually update her expertise since forensic science is very dynamic. She should study the relevant laws and professional legal regulations that affect her profession and people’s rights. Furthermore, she should study professional and ethical codes to avoid acting outside her scope of practice in regard to unprofessional and unethical behaviours. There are various instruments used to measure psycholegal concepts involved in decision making. Computer-Assisted Competence Assessment Tool (CADCOMP) is a computer assisted self-report questionnaire. It has 272 items and captures the offender’s social history, legal understanding and mental soundness. An offender fills the questionnaire in an hour and the computer generates a report that measures the competence of the offender to stand trial. The tool was developed to assist clinicians have offender’ background information before seeing him for further interview. Competence to stand trial assessment instrument (CAI) contain 13 items related to legal issues that appraisal offender’s available legal defenses, ability to relate to the attorney, and mental ability to give pertinent facts. CAI uses a scale of 1-5 that range from total incapacity to no capacity to stand trial. Georgia Court competence test (GCCT) help screen and eliminate offenders who are competent from further mental evaluation. After screening, offenders who score high proceed to trial while further evaluation is conducted on offenders with lower scores. Mac Arthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal adjudication (MacCAT-CA) consist 22 items and is divided into three sections that measure a defenders understanding, reasoning and appreciation capacity. The first 8 items measure ability to understand legal trial. The next 8 item assess reasoning skills. The last 6 items measures the ability of a defender to appreciate his circumstance. Reference Hanson, R. K., Gordon, A., Harris, A. J., Marques, J. K., Murphy, W., Quinsey, V. L., & Seto, M. C. (2002). First report of the collaborative outcome data project on the effectiveness of psychological treatment for sex offenders.Sexual abuse: A journal of research and treatment, 14(2), 169-194 Levitt, S. D. (1997). Juvenile crime and punishment (No. w6191). National Bureau of Economic Research Levitt, S. D. (1997). Juvenile crime and punishment (No. w6191). National Bureau of Economic Research Read More