Programs of intervention with offenders

Programas de intervenção com agressores

Course code:67116

Ana Cristina Pestana Neves

Learning outcomes of the curricular unit:

• Understand the goals of intervention with offenders, relating them to the appropriate framework in legal and technical terms;
• Recognize the specificities and the ethical and deontological limits of this field of psychology;
• Define intervention program;
• Know, describe and analyze the main models and methods of intervention with offenders, favoring an evidence based practice;
• Compare the advantages and limits of individual and group interventions;
• Characterize and train intervention strategies for different forms of violence and age groups of offenders;
• Recognize the specific characteristics and requirements of interventions conducted in an institutional environment or in the community;
• Know and characterize developed or adapted intervention programs in the Portuguese context;
• Plan and adopt procedures for outcome evaluation, recognizing the importance of evaluating results and scientific evidence in forensic context.

Syllabus:

1. Intervention with offenders
   1.1. Goals, legal and technical framework
   1.2. Ethical and deontological principles
   1.3. Intervention programs: concept, characteristics and assumptions
   1.4. Intervention modalities: individual and group
2. Models and methods
   2.1. Risk-need-responsivity model
   2.2. Positive approach to rehabilitation of offenders: Good-Lives Model
   2.3. Transtheoretical model of change and motivational interviewing
   2.4. Cognitive-behavioral programs
3. tervention in specific populations
   3.1. Violent offenders
   3.2. Sex offenders
   3.3. Intimate relationships offenders and stalkers
   3.4. Juvenile delinquents
4. Application Contexts
   4.1. Institutional and community interventions
   4.2. Developed or adapted intervention programs in the Portuguese context
5. New Cognitive Behavioral Therapies
   5.1. Compassion Focused Therapy
   5.2. Psychopathy.com – an individual psychotherapeutic program for juvenile offenders
6. Evaluation of intervention
   6.1. Needs, theory, process, result and efficiency assessment
   6.2. Investigation design
   6.3. Methods of assessment (self-report; official data).

Suggested Bibliography:

• Craig, L.A., Gannon, T.A. & Dixon, L. (2013). What Works in Offender Rehabilitation: An Evidence-Based Approach to Assessment and Treatment. NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Durnescu, I. (2020). Competências Centrais para a Reabilitação de Ofensores – Kit de formação. Bucareste: ARS Docendi.
• Hollin, C. R. (Ed.) (2004). The Essential Handbook of Offender Assessment and Treatment. John Wiley & Sons
• Miller, W.R. & Rollnick, S. (2002). Motivational interviewing: Preparing people for change (2nded.). NY: Guilford Press
• Proulx, J. (2020). The Wiley handbook of what works with sexual offenders: contemporary perspectives in theory, assessment, treatment, and prevention. Hoboken : Wiley Blackwell.