Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Evaluation: Cognitive-behavioural
Treatment (Anger Management)
- Phase 1 of Anger Management: Cognitive Preparation
- The offender, with a therapist, reflects on
situations in the past that may have
triggered their anger, and considers
whether they could have reacted
differently. This means that events that may
have been seen as threatening or
'flashpoint' in the past are seen more
rationally and are redefined.
- A weakness of anger management is that it may not be suitable for
everyone and may actually have undesired effects on particular types of
offenders. For example, Damien Hanson murdered a man after being
able to convince a parole board review panel that he should be released
from prison after following a course of 24 anger management sessions.
Therefore, it is suggested that the anger management treatment
enhanced Hanson's ability to manipulate the situation to his advantage,
suggesting that it may actually teach some prisoners how to become
more manipulative.
- Phase 2 of Anger Management: Skill Acquisition
- Offenders are taught a range of techniques that
aims to help them cope more effectively with
anger-provoking situations. These may be quite
simple techniques, like counting to ten. Self-talk
techniques promote calmness rather than
aggression, and is likely to become an automatic
response if practiced regularly. Other techniques,
such as meditation and deep breathing aim to
control one's emotions rather than be controlled
by them.
- There is a lot of research evidence which suggests that
anger management is useful in reducing offenders' urge for
revenge. Holbrook found that there was a significant
reduction in post-treatment vengeance scores measured by
a vengeance scale in a group of males who were chosen to
partake in anger management. This suggests that anger
management can have long-term positive outcomes, such as
decreasing the desire for revenge.
- However, Blackburn argued that anger management
may help offenders control their behaviour in the
short-term, but may have little impact on long-term
reoffending rates. This may be due to a non-causal
relationship between anger and offending.
- Ireland found that offenders that received anger management
treatment showed significant improvement on at least 1 out of
3 measures of progress, compared to the control group that
got no treatment. Those judged as 'violent' prior to the
investigation showed the largest improvement. This suggests
that anger management is more effective than no treatment,
and is particularly effective for more violent offenders.
- However, a weakness of this study is its short-term nature. It
was only conducted over 8 weeks so may not have been a
sufficient amount of time to realistically evaluate the
effectiveness of the programme. This means it's questionable
whether Ireland's study is a good indicator of how effective
anger management is in the long term.
- Phase 3 of Anger Management: Application and Practice
- The therapist derives a situation where the
offender is able to demonstrate the skills
that they have learnt, for example through
reconstructing events where the offender
lost control in the past. This is to test
whether the new techniques that have been
taught were externalised or not.
- A strength of anger management is that it addresses different
aspects of offending behaviour. The therapy is an
interdisciplinary approach that works on a number of different
levels (the three different phases). This acknowledges the fact
that offending is a complete psychological activity that requires
a holistic approach to treatment.