Treatment of the Offender
Author: R. David Parrish.
Source: Volume 04, Number 06, September/October 2003 , pp.85-86(2)
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Abstract:
Understanding “Offending” We generally think of an offender as a person who has committed a crime, and we generally think of the treatment of the offender as the treatment of a person who has committed a crime and is in prison. In this country we have called prisons correctional institutions for decades, the assumption being that we should correct rather than punish offender behavior. For the most part, our correctional institutions are corrective in name only. If our institutions are correctional, one would suppose that they are in the business of behavioral change, and should therefore be directly connected to the knowledge and expertise of the field of behavioral change, just as a hospital is a place where medical knowledge is developed and practiced by medical professionals. If we were to realistically approach the challenge of changing offensive behavior, it would behoove us to identify the most potent and useful knowledge and techniques to accomplish this.Keywords: perception, conceptualization, non-judgmental, right/wrong, barriers, superegos
Affiliations:
1: Riverfront State Prison.