REHABILITATING REHABILITATION

The cognitive-behavioral model has been the prevailing model of offender

rehabilitation and delinquency prevention over the past thirty years. Many
programs based on this model have yielded reductions in re-offending among a wide
variety of types of juvenile and adult offenders. However, the average reduction
may not be sufficiently robust to sustain political support for offender
rehabilitation programs against the increasing popularity of "getting tough on
crime" programs.

Dr. R. R. Ross, University of Ottawa, argues that it "time to think" again about
the adequacy of the cognitive behavioral model in the light of recent research he
has reviewed in the following areas:

• research on the relationship between antisocial behavior and cognition

• research on the relation between cognition and emotion
• research on the role of emotion in prosocial competence
• research on moral reasoning and values
• research on “emotional values”
• research on empathy
• research on desistance from a criminal lifestyle
• research on the development of prosocial competence
• research on “automatic thinking and feeling”
• research on social cognitive neuroscience.

He has presented a revised rehabilitation model - the "neurocriminology" model

that is based on recent neuroscience studies that have determined that the adverse
effects on the developing brain of being exposed to adverse socio-environmental
crinimogenic conditions can be long-term. Inadequate nutrition, poverty, low
social status, abuse, deprivation, neglect, victimization, oppression, racism,
social isola¬tion, alienation, and other cultural, ethnic, racial, class
influences and mental health difficulties that have been identified by many
studies as criminogenic risk factors can permanently impact the development of the
brain and the functioning of par¬ticular neurotransmitters and their receptor
sites (Farah, Noble, and Hurt, 2006).

The brains of children who, for example, are raised in a socially toxic
environment of isolation; poverty; rejection; hostility; abuse and maltreatment;
or who experience consistent failure in school have those experiences seared in
their brains in neural networks that can trigger deep feelings of anxiety, fear,
anger and hostility that can engender antisocial behavior. Enduring antisocial
patterns can be developed deep in the brain early in brain develop¬ment in
childhood and adolescence. However, social cognitive neuroscience has developed an
understanding of how such new neural connections are formed; an understanding that
can enable us to guide the formation in a prosocial direction.

Criminological research has identified not only factors that put the individual at
risk of developing an antisocial lifestyle - the risk factors. It has also has
identified protective factors that lead individuals to refrain from or desist from
antisocial behavior –"prosocial growth factors". Such research yields an
understanding of how we can help antisocial individuals develop new neural
pathways that will engender not antisocial but prosocial feelings, thoughts,
attitudes, values and behaviors. Neuroscience research indicates how that can be
achieved by particular forms of program interventions designed to influence brain
development such that even individuals with long histories of anti-social and
criminal behavior can be led to acquire prosocial competence and a prosocial
identity.
Dr. Ross has identified specific cognitive behavioural training, emotional
recognition and management training, prosocial simulation training, neurobics
training and prosocial role-taking techniques that can yield substantially
increased reductions in antisocial behavior. The evidence-based model indicates
how cognitive-behavioral combined with neuroscience-based programs can not only
develop cognitive and behavioral skills but also emotional skills, empathy; moral
emotions; and prosocial attitudes, values and motivation that are required for the
acquisition of prosocial competence, and for the development of a prosocial
identity that can lead to successful desistance from an antisocial life-style.

Neuroscience-based cognitive behavioural programs have been developed by Dr. R.R.

Ross and his colleagues and field tested in England and Estonia through the
Cognitive Centre of Canada at the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa
(cogcen@canada.com). Two of the programs have now been successfully field-tested
with some of the most extreme offenders - mentally disordered offenders
incarcerated in secure hospitals in England.

The programs take the form of a new edition of the internationally renowned
Reasoning and Rehabilitation (R&R) program that has been translated in thirteen
languages and delivered to more than seventy thousand juvenile and adult offenders
in seventeen countries over the past twenty years. Based on the revised model and
the need for differential treatment, the new edition (R&R2) provides a family of
new programs specifically designed for specific groups of antisocial individuals
including antisocial adolescents; adult offenders; girls and young women;
antisocial youths and adults with symptoms of ADHD; youths and adults with mental
health problems; "at risk" youths; and the parents and support persons of
antisocial adolescents and adults.

The research and the programs are described in the recently published book :
"Rehabilitating Rehabilitation: Neurocriminology for Treatment of Antisocial
Behaviour" published by the Cognitive Centre of Canada.
Email: cogcen@canada.com