Offending Behaviour: Skills and Stratagems for Going Straight - Hardcover

Debates about how to deal with offenders usually revolve round three basic notions - that they should either be punished; or given "treatment"; or offered help with their practical problems. Yet, however dissimilar or even incompatible, these measures may be, they share one common feature : a demonstrable lack of effectiveness as means of reducing the incidence of crime. A possible reason for this may be that our current reponses to criminality are fundamentally misdirected, for they focus almost exclusively on aspects of individuals' behaviour other than their actual offences. This is a practical handbook which seeks to remedy this by re-directing attention towards what exactly happens when people break the law. It presents an argument for helping offenders to work directly with their own deviant behaviour, and surveys evidence bearing on the possibility that this behaviour can be changed. The principal aim of the book is to describe methods and provide materials for undertaking work of this kind, including exercises for: exploring offences or patterns of offence behaviour; eliciting and altering offenders' values and beliefs about themselves; developing skills, eg for resisting group pressure and acquiring self-control; attempting to lessen the damage and "criminalizing" effects of the legal and penal system. This book is designed for use by anyone working with offenders - whether professional or volunteer - in probation, prisons, homes, hostels, intermediate treatment, special hospitals, day centres, youth work or elsewhere. Overall the book poses a challenge to the widespread view that there is nothing positive that we can do that will have any effect on offence behaviour. The authors have also written "Social Skills and Personal Problem Solving" and "Learning to Help".