Crime left side

Question 1

Biological explanations of offending behavior: A Historical approach

Answer 1

Criminal personality types
Atavistic form
- This is an explanation for criminal behaviour, suggests that certain individuals are born with a criminal personality and this innate personality is a throwback to primate forms
- Lombroso wrote the criminal man in 1876 setting out his view that offenders possessed similar characteristic traits to lower primates
- Turvey 2011 identified 18 characteristics that make up the atavistic type, and this forms the basic assumption that the innate physiological make up of a person causes them to become a criminal
- Lombroso also identified different crimes to different features in order to identify them making them become a criminal
Empirical evidence
- Lombroso based his theory using post mortem examinations of criminals and studying the faces of living criminals
- Made measurements of skulls and other physiological characteristics
- He and his co-workers examined over 50,000 bodies and in one particular study of 383 convicts he found that 21% had just one atavistic trait and 43% had at least 5
Environmental influences
- Lamobroso later recognised that it was unlikely that only one factor would be the cause of criminality
- Proposed that inherited atavistic form interacted with a person’s physical and social environment, still a determinist view because it suggests that factors outside a person’s control determine whether they become criminal
- Distinguished between 3 types of criminals
- Born criminals – the atavistic type
- Insane criminals - suffering from mental illness
- Criminaloids – large general class of offenders whose mental characteristics predisposed them to criminal behaviour under the right circumstance
Somatotypes
- Number of other historical approaches to criminal types some of them based on body shape or somatotype, Kretschmer suggested that there were 4 types
- Leptosome or asthenic – tall thin and petty thieves
- Athletic – tall and muscular – crimes of violence
- Pyknic – short and fat – commit crimes of deception and sometimes violence
- Dysplastic or mixed – more than one type – crimes against morality such as prostitution

Question 2

Biological explanations of offending behaviour: Genetic and neural

Answer 2

Biological explanations of offending behaviour: genetic and neural
- Genetic explanations – this is the likelihood of behaving in a particular way is determined by a person’s genetic makeup
- Raine reviewed research on the delinquent behaviour of twins and found that 52% concordance for MZ twins compared with 21% of DZ twins
Searching for candidate genes
- Manoamine oxdiase A (MAOA) – Brunner on 28 male members of a Dutch family who had histories of impulsive and violent crime behaviours such as rape and attempted murder. Analysed the DNA of these men and found that they shared a particular gnee that led to abnormally low levels of MAOA
- Cardherin 13 (CDH13) – Tihonen et al with 900 offenders found evidence of low MAOA and low activity of the CDH13 gene, they estimated that 5-10% of all violent crime in Finland was due to abnormalities in one of these 2 genes
Diathesis stress
- Epigenetics contradicts the idea that just genes will determine behaviour
- Epigenetic proposed that genes are switched on and off by epigones which in turn is affected by environmental conditions
- Caspi et al used data from the longitudinal Dunedin study that has followed 1000 people since they were babies in the 1970s, caspi et al identified antisocial behaviour at the age of 26 and found that 12% of men with low MAOA genes have experienced maltreatment when they were babies but were responsible for 44% of violent convictions
Neural explanations
- Involves areas of the brain and nervous systems and the action of chemical messengers in the brain known as neurotransmitters controlling behaviour
Regions of the brain
- Common observation is that criminals report having some head injury in general 8.5% of the US have a brain injury compared with 60% of those in US prisons
- Brain conditions may be due to nurture or there inherited
Prefrontal cortex
- Raine cited 71 brain imaging studies showing that murders psychopaths and violent individuals have reduced functioning in the prefrontal cortex, this is the area of the brain that is involved in regulating emotion and controlling moral behaviour in general, lowered activity in this area is associated with impulsiveness and loss of control
Limbic system
- Set of subcortical structures such as the thalamus and the amygdala that were linked to emotion and motivation
- Raine et al studied murders who were not guilt by reason of insanity compared with match controls and they found abnormal asymmetries in the limbic system of the murders especially the amygdala there was reduced activity of the left and increased activity on the right
Neutrotransmitters
- Serotonin – researchers suggests that low level of the neurotransmitter sertoning may predispose individuals to impulsive aggression and criminal behaviour partly because this neurotransmitter normally inhibits the prefrontal cortex, dopamine hyperactivity may enhance this effect
- Noradrenaline – both very high and low levels of this neurotransmitter have been associated with aggression, violence and criminality, high levels of noradrenaline are associated with activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the fight or flight response and are linked to aggression, helps people react to perceived threats

Question 3

Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory

Answer 3

Eysneck theory of personality
- Based on the idea that character traits tend to cluster along three dimensions, two of the dimensions are displayed in the diagram to the left these are the most important
Dimensions are
- Extraversion-introversion – extraverts are outgoing, have a positive emotion but get bored easily
- Neuroticism – stability – neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotional states rather than positive states
- Psychoticism – normality – psychotics are egocentric, aggressive, impulsive, impersonal, lack empathy and are not concerned about the well-being of others
These are normally distributed, devised the EPQ – Eysenck personality questionnaire
Biological basis
- Eysneck suggested that each trait has a biological basis which is mainly innate, and he suggested that 67% of the variance for traits is due to genetic factors
- Extraversion – determined by the overall level of arousal in a person’s nervous system, a person whose under-aroused requires more stimulation whereas an over-aroused person does not require this, extraverts tend to seek external stimulation to increase there cortical brain arousal, introverts are innately over-aroused and thus seek to reduce or avoid stimulation
- Neuroticism – is determined by the level of stability in the sympathetic nervous syndrome, this is how much a person responds in situations of threats, a neurotic person is someone who is slightly unstable and reacts or gets upset quickly, the stable person has a more unreactive nervous system and they are clam under pressure
- Psychoticism – related to higher levels of testosterone which mean that men are more likely to be found at the end of this spectrum
Link to criminal behaviour
- Link between personality and criminal behaviour can be explained in terms of arousal, extraverts seek more arousal and thus engage in dangerous activities
- Neurotics are unstable therefore they over react to situations of threat which would explain some criminal activity
- Psychoticism can be linked as criminals lack emotion and are aggressive
- Eysenck also explained criminality in terms of the outcome between innate personality and socialisation, a person is born with certain traits but interaction with the environment is key in the development of criminality
- This can be seen as particularly in conditioning, in a normal person wrongdoing is avoided because of previous punishment this is when a person does something wrong they are punished and this reduces the likelihood that their behaviour is repeated
- Eysenck claimed that people who were high in extraversion and neuroticism were less easily conditioned and therefore they do not learn to avoid anti-social behaviour

Question 4

Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Cognitive

Answer 4

Cognitive distortion
- Thinking that has a bias such that what is perceived by a person does not match reality
- The result is a persons perception of events is wrong but they think it is accurate, allows criminals to deny or rationalise their behaviour
Hostile attribution of bias
- Attribution refers to what we think when we observe someones actions and draw an inference about what it means for example if a person smiles at you you might infer that they like you
- A hostile attribution bias is when someone has a leaning towards always thinking the worse for example if someone smiles at you but you think that that person is actually thinking bad thoughts about you – this leads to more negative aggression
Minimisation
- Both magnification and minimisation are cognitive distortions where the consequences of a situation are either over or under exaggerated, in the case of criminal behaviour minimisation can explain how offender may reduce any negative interpretation of their behaviour before and after a crime has been committed, this helps the individual accept the consequences for their own behaviour and means negative emotion can be reduced
- For example a burglar might think that when planning a crime that stealing a few things from a wealthy family has little effect on their lives therefore the criminal does feel as bad about committing the crime
Level of moral reasoning
Kohlbergs interviewed boys and men about their moral decisions and constructed a stage theory of moral development, each stage represents a more advanced form of moral understanding, resulting in a more logically consistent and morally advanced form of moral understanding, there are three levels of moral reasoning and each level is divided into two stages, people progress into these stages as a consequence of biological maturity and also as a consequence of having opportunities to discuss and develop their thinking
Link to offending behaviour
In a longitudinal study Kohlberg found that 10% of adults reach the post conventional level so the most common level of moral development who break the law would feel that their behaviour was justified because it helps maintain relationships or society, so an offender might breaking the law to protect a member of his/her family or protecting other people
Criminals are likely to be at the pre-convetional level and they believe that breaking the law is justified if the rewards outweigh the costs or if punishment can be avoided, most people reach this stage at the age of 10 in kohlbergs study just 20% of the children at age 10 were at stage 1 and 60% were at stage 2, this fits with the idea of criminal responsibility, in Enlgand and wales as children under the age of 10 cannot be charged with a crime bcause it is believed that they don’t understand the idea of moral responsibility

Question 5

Psychosocial explanations of offending behaviour: differential association

Answer 5

Differential association theory
- Edwin Sutherland proposed differential association theory suggesting that offending behaviour can be explained entirely in terms of social learning
- It is a sociological theory because it suggests that people are socialised into a life of crime
- The concept of differential association is that people vary in the frequency with which they associate with others who have more or less favourable attitudes towards crime and these attitudes influence their own attitudes and behaviour
- Believed it was possible to develop a mathematical formula which would predict whether or not someone would turn to crime based on the frequency duration and intensity of their social contacts
What is learned
- Child learns attitudes towards crime, potential criminal is someone who has learned pro-criminal attitudes from those around them
- Children will learn which particular types of crimes are acceptable within their community and also desirable for example they may learn that burglary is acceptable but that violent crime is not
- Child may also learn about specific methods for committing crimes, some techniques are complicated whereas others are simple
Who is it learned from
- Attitudes and behaviours are learned from intimate personal groups such as family and or peer group
- Learned from the wider neighbourhood this is the degree to which the local community supports or opposes criminal involvement determines the differences in crime rates from one areas to another
- The individuals or social groups may not be criminals themselves but they may still hold deviant attitdues or an acceptance of attitudes
How is it learned
- Sutherland suggested that the frequency length and personal meaning of such social associations will determine the degree of influence
- Sutherland did not specify the mode of learning but it is likely to be both direct and indirect operant conditioning
- A child may be directly reinfornced for deviant behaviours through praise or may be punished for such behaviour by family and peers
- Role models would provide opportunities to model behaviour and if the role model are successful themselves in criminal activities this would provide indirect reinforcement
- Social groups establish the norms by which we define behaviour
Sutherland proposed nine key principles
1. Criminal behaviour is learned rather than inherited
2. It is learned through association with others
3. The association is with intimate personal groups
4. What is learned are techniques and attitudes/motivations
5. The learning is directional – either for or against crime
6. If the number of favourable attitudes outweigh unfavourable ones then a person becomes an offender
7. The learning experiences vary in frequency and intensity for each individual
8. Criminal behaviour is learned through the same process as any other behaviour
9. General need is not a sufficient explanation for crime because not everyone with those needs turns to crime

Question 6

Psychological explanations of offending behavior: Psychodynamic

Answer 6

Maternal deprivation theory

• Bowlby proposed that prolonged separations between a mother and child would have long term emotional consequences, separation will only have this affect if this happens before the age of two and half and if there is no substitute mother person avaliable,-
• felt there was a risk up to the age of 5
• one consequence is affectionless psychpathy which is a lack of normal affection, shame or sense of responsibility

Explaining delinquent behaviour

• Bowlbys work as a psychiatrist in a child guidance clinic meant he came into contact with children who had been caught stealing as his patients, he observed a number of these delinquent thieves had experienced early separations and they also displayed signs of affection less psychopathy - enabled them to be thieves as they could steal from others as it did’nt matter
• Bowlby compared 44 thieves attending his clinic with 44 control patients, found that none of the control participants experienced early separations whereas 39% of all thieves had experienced early separations, also found that thieves with an affectionless character had almost experienced frequent separations, 86% of the affection less thieves compared with 17% of all thieves

the superego

• Freud decided that the personality develops from three components, the id, superego and ego and all demand gratification
• id represents our primitive wants and operates according to the pleasure principle
• the superego determines which behaviours are permissible and causes feelings of guilt when rules are broken, it functions as a moral compass
• the ego mediates between the impulsive demands of the id and moralistic demands of the superego, ego is anchored in the reality of the external world this is reality principle
• superego likely to be related to offending behaviour because it is concerned with right and wrong

weak or underdeveloped superego

• according to Freud the superego develops around the age of 4 as an outcome of the Oedipus complex or Electra complex
• a child who does not identify with their same sex parent or whose parent is absent develops a weak superego, the consequence is that the person has little control over anti social behaviour and is likely to act in ways that gratify their instinctual id impulses

harsh or overdeveloped superego
- at the other extreme a child may develop a strong identification with a strict parent, the consequence is excessive feelings of guilt and anxiety much of the time because anytime the person did not act on the id then they would feel bad, the individual would commit a crime with the wish to be caught and then the punishment would reduce their feelings of guilt

deviant superego
- normal identification with the same sex parent means that the child takes on the same moral attitudes as that parent, in the case of the children with a criminal parent the child would then adopt the same deviant attitudes

Question 7

Dealing with offending behavior: Custodial sentencing and recidivism

Answer 7

What is a custodial sentence
- a custodial sentence is one where the court requires an offender to be held in an prison or some other closed community like a psychiatric hospital

aims of custodial sentencing

1. to protect the public: incapacitation
   - putting criminals in prison is necessary in the case of violent people who may not be capable of controlling their behaviour and the public needs to be protected
2. to punish an offender and prevent recidivism
   - behaviourist approach to dealing with offending behaviour, the principle is that punishment decreases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated, punishment or the threat of punishment may not work but it is believed by many people to be the reason why most people dont commit crime
3. to deter others
   - the fact that people are given prison sentences should discourage the general population from committing crimes, if the punishment was seen as less serious people will be willing to take the risk and break the law, social learning approach as we indirectly learn from the consequences of other behaviour
4. to atone from wrongdoing: retribution
   - the victim and their friends/family wish to feel a sense of justice being done, the offender should be seen to pay in some way for the crime that they committed, just paying a fine would be insufficient
5. to rehabilitate others
   - many people take the view that the only way to prevent criminal behaviour is through a form of education or therapy, this is especially in the case of offenders with mental health issues, best opportunity for therapy as there are fewer distractions and there may be incentives for participation

psychological effects of custodial sentencing

1. deindividuation
   - The standford prison study shows how prison and guard uniforms lead to a loss of individual identity which is associated with increased aggression and treating people in inhuman ways
2. depression, self-harm and suicide
   - depression can be explained in terms of hopelessness, offenders entering prison may initially feel quite anxious about the whole new and frightening environment, hopeless about their future and lacking in control
   - abramson et al suggested that depression is caused by both helplessness and hopelessness
   - The Howard League for prison reform reported 10,000 incidents of self harm in 2008 although self harm may also be explained in terms of conformity,
   - greatest risk group is single young men in the first 24 hours of imprisonment for suicide
3. overcrowding and lack of privacy
   - growing prison population in the UK has not been matched by an increase in the number of prisons, 25% of prisoners are in overcrowded accommodation for example 2 people in one cell for one
   - this has an effect of the psychological state of prisoners
   - Calhoun 1962 - rats in overcrowded places led to increased aggression as well as hypersexuality, stress and increased physical illnesses
4. effects of the family
   - children with a mother or father in prison are deeply affected financially and psychologically and the reverse is true, parents in prison may feel guilt and separation anxiety

Question 8

defining and measuring crime

Answer 8

Defining crime
- A crime refers to any behaviour that is unlawful and punished by the state, it is an act that is harmful to an individual, group or society as a whole
- It is not simply a behaviour that is deemed wrong but it is a behaviour which has been identified as wrong by the law
- Not every violation of the law counts as a crime but some breaches of contract for example are not punished by the state
The influence of culture
- Obvious that criminal behaviour will vary from country to country depending on the law in those countries
- For example in UK it is against the law to have more than one wife but in other countries this is criminal behaviour, laws also vary on alcohol intake
- In addition within a country laws change over time and they are not constant for example the law of homosexuality was illegal until 1969 and in the 17th century stealing a handkerchief was punishable by hanging
- Therefore the definition of crime is a social construction related to the dominant morals and values of a particular culture at a particular time
Ways of measuring crime
- In order to deal with crime and form government polices and in order to conduct research related to crime we need to know how much crime is actually committed and to do that we need to collect data
Official statistics
- In most countries government produces official crime statistics annually
- Now based on any incident reported to the police or when the police observe or discover an offense, for example data is given for any one year on the number of robberies, violet versus non-violent crimes, driving offences, offences experienced by children, sexual offences and so on
- Make historical comparisons to look at trends in crime
- National crime reporting standard begun in 2002 records any reported incident whether or not it is recorded as a crime
Victim surveys
- Alternative approach is to ask a sample of people to identify which crimes have been committed against them over a fixed period of time
- The crime survey for England and Wales was started in the UK in 1982, a separate one was set up for Scotland in 2012 and so it is now just the crime survey
- Since 2001 it has been repeated every year and now involves a sample of 50,000 households interviewing those aged 16 years and over in the household, smaller sample of 10-15 year olds who are also involved
- Sample is selected randomly from the Royal Mails list of addresses, so all groups of people are represented
- Each person is interviewed using a fixed set of questions which relate to general attitudes or more specific
- All data is confidential
Offender surveys
- Third way to collect data about crime is to question offenders, in England and Wales the offending crime and Justice survey was carried out annually between 2003 and 2006
- Aim was to increase knowledge about young people and criminal behaviour
- Initial sample consisted of people aged 10 to 65 living in private households in Engalnd an Wales
- A subsample of 5,000 people aged 10 to 25 at the outset were studied longitudinally up to 2006, over 95% of respondents remained in the study over the four years
- Questions sought to produce information about the extent of offending, anti-social behaviour and drug use, focus was on criminal behaviour and the relevant contextual data

Question 9

offender profiling: The top down approach

Answer 9

• Top down approach originates with the FBI, first developed as a way of trying to solve some of the most bizarre murder cases
• It is more intuitive application of a profilers prior knowledge, the profiler has a feel for the kind of person who has committed a crime whereas the bottom up approach is regarded as more scientific
  1. Profiling inputs
• Data collected at this stage includes a description of the crime scene, background information about the victim and details of the crime itself
• All information should be included even if it is trivial, possible suspects should not be considered as this may bias the information
  2. Decision process models
• Profiler starts to make decisisons about the data and organises it into patters
• Murder type – mass, spree or serial murders
• Time factors – did it take a short or long time, and was it at night or during the day
• Location – was the crime scene the same as the murder scene
  3. Crime assessment
• Organised type of offender – the crime tends to be planned and the victim is specifically targeted, the body is often transported from the scene the weapon usually hidden and violent fantasies may be acted out on the victim. These offenders are usually high in intelligence, socially and sexual competent they usually live with a partner and follow their crimes in the media
• Disorganised type of offender – this is the opposite, tends to be an unplanned crime, random selection of victim, offender likely to engage very little with the victim and sexual acts are performed after the death of the victim, crime scene is likely to contain many clues such as blood and semen from the offender
  4. Criminal profile
• A profile is now constructed of the offender which includes hypotheses about their likely background, habits, and beliefs of the offender
• Description is used to work out a strategy for the investigation to help catch the offender
• Important to anticipate how they will respond to investigative efforts including how they might interview if caught
  5. Crime assessment
• Written report is given to the investigating agency and persons matching the profile are evaluated, if new evidence is generated and no suspect is identified then the process is goes back to step 2
  6. Apprehension
• If a suspect is apprehended the entire profile process is reviewed to check that at each stage the conclusions made were legitimate and consider how the process may be revised for future cases

Question 10

offender profiling: The bottom up approach

Answer 10

The investigative psychology
- Developed by David Canter, a psychologist who proposed that profiling can and should be based on psychological theory and research
Interpersonal coherence
- Consistent in their behaviour and therefore there will be links with elements of the crime and how people behave in everyday life
- At the same time behaviour changes over time and therefore looking at the differences in crimes over a 4 year period might offer further clues
Forensic awareness
- Certain behaviours may reveal an awareness of a particular police techniques and past experience for example Davis et al found that rapists who conceal fingerprints often had a previous conviction for burglary
Smallest space analysis
- Statistic techniques developed by Canter
- Data about crime scenes and offender characteristics are correlated so that most common connections can be identified
- Gabrielle Salfati and David Canter analysed the co-occurency of 48 crime scene and offender characteristics taken from 82 UK murder cases where the victim was a stranger
Instrumental opportunistic – refers to using the murder to obtain something or accomplish a goal, opportunistic means that the offender took the easiest opportunities
Instrumental cognitive – a particular concern about being detected and therefore more planned
Expressive impulsive – uncontrolled in the heat of strong emotions, may feel provoked by victim

Geographical profiling
- People reveal themselves through the crimes they commit and the locations that they chose
- It makes sense to assume that offenders are more likely to commit a crime near where they live or where they habitually travel to because it involves least effort
- Analyses the location of a connected series and considers where the crimes were committed, the spatial relationship between different crime scenes and how they might relate to an offenders place of residence
Circle theory
- Canter and Larkin proposed that most offenders have a spatial mindset, they commit their cirmes within a kind of imagined circle
Marauder – the offenders home is within the geographical area in which crimes are committed
Commuter – the offender travels to another geographical area and commits crime within a defined space around which a circle can be drawn
Criminal geographic targeting
- Computerised system developed by Kim Rossmo and based on the Rossmo’s formula
- Formula produces a 3D map displaying spatial data related to time distance and movement to and from crime scenes, this map is called a jeopardy surface and the different colours indicate likely closeness to crime scene

Question 11

dealing with offending behaviour: Behaviour modification in custody

Answer 11

Token economy
- system of exchange of goods based on tokens, works well in a closed society such as a prison or institution

Reinforcement

• operant conditioning involves the reinforcement of new behaviours, in a token economy prisoners are given tokens when they perform desirable behaviours such as making their beds or obeying orders
• tokens can then be used to obtain desirable goods such as tobacco or watching TV, thus increasing the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated
• items such as tobacco are primary reinforces and the tokens are secondary reinforcers because they become reinforcers through being repeatedly presented alongside the reinforcing stimulus
• target behaviours should be clearly specificed and there may be a hierarchy where some behaviours get more tokens than others
• rewards must be clearly defined

Punishment
- further strategy is to remove tokens because of undesirable behaviours which would be a punishment

Shaping
- longer term objectives or complex behaviour can be taught through the process of shaping whereby tokens are given for behaviours that become more complex, for example initially tokens would be given for prisoners making their bed daily then later for being polite to prison guards

Key study: Hobbs and Holt
- used a token economy at Alabama Boys Industrial school - a state training school for adolescent delinquents, aim was to reduce inappropriate social behaviour before and after dinner and when lining up

Procedure

• staff were given training 3 x four hours and then twice weekly over three months, this was to identify and define target behaviours, discuss methods of observing and recording data and working out logistical problems
• weekly sessions to assess operation
• 125 males observed living in 4 cottages, one was a control where boys did not get tokens, baseline data before tokens was collected for all groups
• boys were told the target criteria and told how many tokens they could earn in each category, each day the boys were told how many tokens that they had earned and were given a piece of paper with this information
• then they were taken to a token economy store once a week where they could buy drinks, sweets, toys and cigarettes
• could also save tokens and use them for more expensive off-campus activities such as a baseball game or home visit

Findings

• the baseline mean percentages for social behaviour before the boys were given tokens were 66%, 47% and 73% for each of the three categories, these increased to 91%, 81% and 94%
• the control group had no increase

Question 12

Dealing with offending behaviour: Anger management

Answer 12

Anger management

• the use of anger management has two aims, first a short term aim of reducing anger and aggression in prisons where it is a serious issue and the long term aim of rehabillitation and reduction of recidivism
• cognitive approach the aim is to change the way a person handles anger and aggression - cognitive therapy accepts that the situation itself may not be changeable but a person can change the way they think about it and thus change their behaviour

key aims

• cognitive restructuring - greater self-awareness and control over cognitive dimensions of anger
• regulation of arousal - learning to control the physiological state
• behavioural strategies - such as problem solving skills, strategic withdrawal and assertiveness

stress inoculation model
- most anger management programmes are used with offenders and are based on work by Novaco - model drew on the stress inoculation aims to provide a vaccination against future infections
- the therapy is conducted with a group of offenders either inside prison or outside for example during a probation period, has three key steps
1. cognitive preparation - this is the initial phase where the clients learn about anger generally, how it can be adaptive and non adaptive, they analyse their own patterns of anger and identify situations which provoke anger in them
2. skill acquisition - in the second phase, clients are taught various skills to help manage their anger such as self-regulation, cognitive flexibility and relaxation, they are also taught better communication skills so they can resolve conflicts assertively without being angry
3. application training - clients apply the skills initially in controlled and non-threatening situations such as role plays of previous situations that made them angry, they receive extensive feedback from the therapist and other group members - they then try out their skills in real world settings
Examples of anger management programmes with offenders
Ireland 2004
- assessed the effectiveness of anger management therapy with 87 young male offenders
- baseline measure was made assessing pre-intervention anger and each participant was assessed by prison officer
- 50 peopel took part while another 37 were placed on a waiting list, treatment cosisted of 12 one hour sessions over three days
- 8 weeks after participants were reassessed using the questionnaire and also assessed by prison officers, the study found improvements in the experimental group and no changes in the control group over that time period

Trimble et al 2015

• reported on an anger management programme with 105 offenders on probation in Northern Ireland
• the programme did not include offenders which had a poor history of anger and aggressive behaviour alone but included those whose anger and poor emotional control predisposed them to offend
• conducted in a range of centres
• 9 weekly sessions lasting two hours with 15 minutes break
• found that the programme reduce the expression of anger as well as the amount of anger experienced among offenders compared to their pro-treatment scores