Newsletter
Volume 31 | 2008 | Number 2
Crime and Delinquency
By Dr. Joseph Cautilli
If you believe in improving the world with behavior analysis, then this is the SIG for you. Crime hurts people, destroys families, and degrades communities. Crime affects not only the victims and their families, but the families of criminals, as well.
Work to revitalize the Crime and Delinquency SIG at ABAI continues. This SIG was dormant for several years but socially is much needed and within behavior analysis, is justified. Large issues of public policy and financing are dedicated to crime prevention and crime reduction. In addition, our current prison system needs substantial reform.
Behavior analytic interventions have played an influential role in efforts to reduce crime and delinquency. Today, one in 35 people in the U.S. alone are involved with the criminal justice system. The Crime and Delinquency SIG is committed to providing information on the effectiveness of behavior analytic interventions to prevent crime and rehabilitate offenders, including treatments for addictions, arson, and sex offenders. A community reinforcement approach to treatment is one of the few evidence-based practices for addictions to gain national and international acceptance. In addition, our goal is to ensure that over the next five years, substantial training in these techniques is available at the ABAI convention.
Behavioral interventions can reduce crime by approximately 13-20% (Redondo-Illescas, Sánchez-Meca, & Garrido-Genovés, 2001). The American Psychological Association lists behavior modification as an empirically-supported treatment for sex offenders. As well, behavioral parent training is a well-established treatment for oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder, which are often forerunners to adolescent delinquency (see O’Donohue, & Ferguson, 2006). Finally, behaviorally-oriented residential treatment programs, such as teaching family homes (Bernfeld, Blase & Fixsen, 2006), are listed by the Surgeon General as promising for children and adolescents with conduct disorders. Recent evaluations of the literature suggest that the program is even more effective on post-release recidivism than first thought (Kingsley, 2006) so the results are promising.
However, other areas are less influenced by behavioral treatments. For example, a recent study found that nearly a third of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who received care from Veterans Affairs between 2001 and 2005 were diagnosed with mental health or psychosocial ailments. These citizens may be at risk for becoming involved with the law enforcement system. The aforementioned study was published in the March 12, 2007 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine and carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center who examined data from 103,788 veterans. Of the total, 32,010 (31%) were diagnosed with mental health problems, psychosocial problems, or both, including 25,658 who received mental health diagnoses. More than half (56%) were diagnosed with two or more disorders. Other mental health conditions included anxiety disorder (24%), adjustment disorder (24%), depression (20%) and substance abuse disorder (20%). Many evidence-based behavioral treatments exist for this population, including exposure therapy to reduce symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, behavioral activation for treating depression, and community reinforcement and contingency management programs to reduce substance abuse. Recently, efforts have shown some interesting success for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to prevent problems (Polk, personal communication). However, many clinicians are reluctant to use these interventions even in the VA hospital system.
In response, the Crime and Delinquency SIG has joined forces with Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants Chapter for Veterans to begin lobbying efforts to ensure that behaviorally-based treatments are offered as prevention. One area of particular promise in prevention of criminal activity is the program of Kevin Polk and colleagues (Polk, 2007), who use a version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in an intensive outpatient program for veterans who have suffered varying types military trauma. The program is highly structured and runs 12 sessions in one week with two additional sessions for data collection. Initial data reveal promising results and incidental interviews with subjects are hopeful.
This SIG is both a science and practice SIG. It attempts to work with Federal, state, and local prison authorities and provide information to families and loved ones of the incarcerated. In addition, the SIG’s goals include providing future research in the area of rehabilitation, reforming sentencing laws, advocating for more and better job training and education for prisoners, improving reintegration of prisoners to society, and working to eliminate racial profiling and employment discrimination of convicted felons. The Crime and Delinquency SIG strives to reduce crime through the application of behavioral principles and by promoting a policy of criminal justice reform to include these interventions.
The Crime and Delinquency SIG has an active list-serve of approximately 50 members at http://www.baocommunity.org/mailman/listinfo/830-cdfba, which it runs in partnership with the Behavior Analyst Online (BAO) organization. To date, this list-serve has posted over 70 government contract request for proposals for federal community re-entry programs. In addition, more then 100 job announcements have been posted for work within all levels of criminal justice and forensics. With the money and resources from the Second Chance Act coming into play soon, this is a great area of behavior analysts to make an impact.
In addition, the SIG is an active member in producing the newest BAO journal, the Journal of Behavior Analysis of Offender and Victim—Treatment and Prevention. This journal has a mission to highlight the role of behavior analysis in adult and juvenile crime prevention; assessment of offenders including risk assessment; and treatment programs from a behavioral orientation including, but not limited to, the use of behavioral counseling, collaborative goal setting, contingency management, functional assessment, functionally-based interventions, respondent conditioning and counter conditioning procedures, functional analytic psychotherapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, among much else.
The vision of theJournal of Behavior Analysis of Offender and Victim—Treatment and Prevention is as follows: we imagine a world in which evidence-based practices are utilized to reduce recidivism and crime. By 2001, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 2.7% of adults in the U.S. had served time in prison. This is almost a full percentage over the 1.8% of adults that were estimated to have served in 1991. The dramatic rise in incarceration speaks to the need for strong offender treatment and prevention programs. Our first two issues have been loaded with diverse range of journal articles, and we invite the whole behavioral community to contribute to this journal.
Bernfeld, G. A., Blase K. A. & Fixsen, D. L. (2006). Towards a Unified Perspective on Human Service Delivery Systems: Application of the Teaching-Family Model. The Behavior Analyst Today,(2), 168-187.
Fixsen, D. L, Blasé , K. A., Timbers, G.D. & Wolf, M. M. (2007). In Search of Program Implementation: 792 Replications of the Teaching-Family Model. The Behavior Analyst Today, 8(1), 96-105. www.behavior- analyst-online.org.
Kingsley, D. E. (2006). The Teaching-Family Model and Post-Treatment Recidivism: A Critical Review of the Conventional Wisdom. IJBCT,(4), 481-487 www.behavior-analyst-online.org.
Kingsley, D., Ringle, J. L., Thompson, R. W., Chmelka, B.,; Ingram, S.(2008). Cox Proportional Hazards Regression Analysis as a Modeling Technique for Informing Program Improvement: Predicting Recidivism in a Boys Town Five-Year Follow-up Study. The Journal of Behavior Analysis of Offender and Victim Treatment and Prevention, 1(1), 82-97.
O’Donohue, W. & Ferguson, K. E (2006): Evidence-based practice in psychology and behavior analysis. The Behavior Analyst Today, 7(3) 335 –350.