Hidden Secrets of Working with Offenders: Criminal Justice Theories

Welcome, everybody. Today we are going to be talking about theories of criminal behavior, which, surprisingly enough, I found really interesting when I was doing the presentation. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm an academic and I like meta concepts or something. Who knows? So what we're going to do is talk about the different theories of why people commit crime. And what I want you to do throughout this presentation is really think about a couple of things. Think about your clients and exactly what it is that motivates them to do what they do. The other thing that I want to kind of put in there is the fact that if your clients are using illicit drugs, whether or not they get caught, they are still breaking the law. So they are still engaging in criminal behavior. So when we start talking about some of these theories, and maybe you have Jim Bob, who didn't start using until he was in his 20s or 30s or 60s or whatever, I want you to think about how well the theory fits him. So we'll go from there. The psychological theories of crime, and I use that term really loosely because I think a lot of what we're going to talk about in these different theories really overlaps. And I think a lot of these theories basically boil down to looking at different motivations. And just like when we talk about what motivates our clients to do certain things, it really is different for every single person. So deciding on a overall theory of crime is going to be more problematic. It's not like we can say, if these six factors are there, then this person is going to be a criminal. We can look at a lot of different things and what makes the behavior reinforcing or rewarding for a particular person at a particular time. That being said, psychological and, I'll say underpinnings of crime, cognitive theories suggest that an individual's perception and how it's manifested affect his or her potential to commit crime. So if somebody perceives something as harmful, they're probably not going to do it. If somebody perceives something as beneficial, they're probably going to do it. Some other things that we really want to think about when we're talking about how people interpret situations and interpret things, is attributions, is it stable or changeable? Is this person or situation bad, or is this particular instance bad? You know, we all have bad days, but is life miserable all the time? So it's stable or changeable? Internal or external? Does it belong to the person? Is it internal to them? They are a criminal, they are an addict, or is it a behavior that they're doing. And then global or specific again, going back to whether it's all, you know, globally I am smart, globally I am stupid, globally I am. Or specifically, I am really smart when it comes to X, Y and Z. And I am really not smart when it comes to, you know, F, G and H, whatever those are. So, you know, for me, I do really well with language, I do really well with science, I do really well with reading. But when it comes down to math and history, not so much. So I know that when it comes to those specific topics, I'm going to have to do a little bit more work. So that's specific versus global. And this will all make a little bit more sense as we get into it. Additionally, definitions and definitions are huge. We take these abstract concepts and we construct our own definitions of what they mean. What does success mean to you? What does success mean to your client? What does success mean to the person down the street or to your child? Success means different things to different people. But based on your microsystem and to some extent, your macro system, your concept, your definition of success will be, you know, shaped. One of my good friends, definition of success boils down to who has the biggest toy. My definition of success has very little to do with material possessions. So we butt heads on that a lot. Just, you know, we like to banter about meta concepts. I guess when we're talking about our clients or we're talking with our clients, it's not our job to say, well, your definition of success is wrong, or, you know, what have you. But we want to encourage them to look at, where did they get that definition? Why do they hold it? And, you know, what other options might there be that they might consider? The other issue while we're on psychological theories is antisocial personality. So many times I hear people saying that clients who. Or people who are in the criminal justice system are antisocial. And that is just so not the case. A lot of these characteristics also characterize addicts. And not just addicts who are using substances that are illicit, ergo, they're criminals. But people who are engaging in pornography, addiction, people who have any kind of addiction, the guilt, shallow emotions, and lack of empathy. Once somebody gets into an addiction enough, they start shutting down. They need to protect that addiction with the antisocial personality, as the DSM would diagnose it. This is a person who is going to just never have ever felt guilt, intense emotions, or empathy. So we want to kind of differentiate from, is it right now, you know, specific, or have they Never felt this superficial charm. I know a lot of people who have very superficial charm. Does that mean they're antisocial? No. Above average intelligence. A lot of our clients are really quite smart. Now, if they could just use that for good instead of self destruction, that would be super awesome. Persistent violations of the rights of others. Again, when we start looking at addictive behaviors, the person holds that addiction as primary. So protecting that addiction is imperative at all costs. Which sometimes means violating the rights of others. Not that I'm condoning it. I'm just. When you're in that addictive frame of mind, people tend to make different decisions. Inability to form relationship. You know, that sounds pretty classic of people with addictions as well as people who are involved in the criminal justice system. Impulsivity. Yeah. Cuts across risk taking. Yep. Cuts across egocentricity. A lot of times. Yes. It's all about me and being manipulative. So you can see a lot of these characteristics, while they may be antisocial in the personality category. Remember when we're diagnosing antisocial personality disorder, there's a lot of stuff that we've got to look at about what they were doing prior to the age of 15 and how they respond to authority and all that kind of stuff. So just because someone is exhibiting antisocial characteristics doesn't necessarily mean they are antisocial. And there are a lot of people who are in jail who don't have antisocial personality. They were exhibiting those characteristics at the point in time that they got arrested. And there is a big difference. I found it's much easier when working with someone who develops these in response to the environment, life, et cetera. It's much easier to help them become unmotivated or find alternate behaviors to be motivated to do instead of these. When it's been an enduring pattern of behavior since they were knee high to a grasshopper, it's going to be a lot more entrenched in who they are and behavior change, whether it's antisocial, borderline narcissistic, whatever personality disorder label you want to slap on it. If it's been entrenched since they were in diapers, then it's probably going to be a lot harder to address. But there are ways to help people start making better choices. And part of that is up to us to make the better choices more rewarding. So the last thing with psychological theories of crime is some people want to say, well, well, these people just have different brain chemicals and it's more rewarding. Maybe not everybody has A brain chemical imbalance in jail right now. But dopamine is our reward chemical. Norepinephrine is our fight or flight response. And serotonin impacts a whole lot of other things, including anger and aggression. So if there is a neurotransmitter imbalance, it may boast someone to making more impulsive or aggressive decisions if they do something. When people commit a crime, for a lot of them, there's a rush, if you will, they're getting away with something. It's a tension and release sort of activity. So there is going to be, guess what, a dopamine response which makes the behavior rewarding. Not only did they get away with something and get something that they wanted, but they also had the dopamine to go, yeah, let's do that again. And that's going to be true for anybody. It's not just someone who has a neurochemical imbalance. When you take a risk, especially a high risk, and you're successful, most of the time, the body will respond with sort of this endorphin or dopamine rush. So let's move on to some of these theories. The critical theory, and I didn't come up with the names of these theories, that's just what they are. Critical theory says the elite of the society decide laws and the definition of crime. Well, I'm not necessarily going to disagree with that. Those who commit crimes disagree with the laws that were created to keep control of them. I'm not sure I agree with that. Now, some people commit crimes, it's not necessarily because they disagree with the laws, but because they want something that the law is preventing them from getting. And those laws are not necessarily designed just to keep control of those who commit crimes, but those laws are designed to keep control of society as a whole. Crime is a product of oppression of workers and less advantaged groups within society, that is those with lower socioeconomic status and those are who are victims of sexism and racism. So basically this is saying that those people who feel disenfranchised are going to rise up, you know, just kind of bearing it in mind. We're not going to decide on a theory that we think is right. But if you're working in the criminal justice system, it's kind of interesting and important to understand sort of the training that they've had in understanding why the people in the system behave the way they do. And I try to refrain from using the term criminals and offenders, but every once in a while I'll slip. Conflict theory. Crime results from the conflicts among the different social classes. Okay. If you have worked in the criminal justice system or if you worked in community mental health, especially substance abuse, you're probably going to recognize the fact that yes, there are, you know, conflicts among the different social classes. And there may be some conflicts there where the have nots want to get it from the haves. Sure, that happens. But there's also a lot of situations where people within the same social class are offending against one another. Laws arise from necessity as a result of conflict rather than a general consensus. So it's a reactive sort of thing. Conflict theory says we don't have laws until we figure out we need them. Then when there's a problem, we put laws in place, like the drug laws. I was recently reading online that they're considering creating a law so that the only time people can get opiate medications. Now, I'm not talking fentanyl, I'm talking any opiates from oxy all the way up is right after surgery. And if they've got cancer, anybody else is not going to be able to get opiate medications. I don't know what the caveat is for pain physicians, but basically people with chronic pain are going to have to deal with alternatives. My first response is the people who want to use those drugs illicitly, not for the proper purpose are going to get those drugs regardless of whether the law is in place or not. So putting these laws in place is kind of spinning our wheels. But yeah, the fundamental causes of crime are the social and economic forces operating within society. So people feeling disenfranchised, not being able to make enough money, not feeling like they're becoming successful or being able to be successful, so they just kind of scrap it and go, okay, you know, I will either create my own microcosm of success, you know, the streets, or I'm just going to rebel against the machine. The criminal justice system operates on behalf of the rich and powerful social elites, with the resulting policies aimed at controlling the poor. Does it end up working this way? Yeah. Is it really supposed to work this way? I don't think so, but yes. I mean, there are differences in many cases between people who have public defenders that have 150 open cases versus people who have private defense attorneys who have maybe 25 open cases. So yeah, there is definitely something to be said for a social disparity. Criminal justice establishment aims at imposing standards of morality and good behavior created by the powerful on the whole of society. Those who make the laws pretty much dictate for those of us who are going to follow the laws. They do kind of dictate what we're supposed to do and what's. Okay, now there is some wiggle room. We still do have freedom of speech and all that kind of stuff. But again, both of these theories are really talking about class differentials. And when I'm thinking about my clients really not seeing their criminal behavior as motivated from oppression or poverty, I'm seeing it motivated from more intrapsychic things. Is it, are these motivations potential motivations for some people to commit crimes? Oh, heck yes. Yeah, that's not, you know, not hard for me to understand at all or foresee it all. But what is important is to recognize that conflict theory doesn't apply to all people in the criminal justice system and maybe not even to most people in the criminal justice system. In conflict theory, the focus is on separating the powerful from the have nots to protect themselves from crime, basically creating their own little mini gated neighborhood. In the process, the legal rights of the poor are ignored. Again, if the criminal justice system is working correctly, that's not the case. So conflict theory, in my opinion, goes a step beyond how it's supposed to work to kind of how it is working right now. According to this theory, the middle class are co opted, siding with the elites, thinking they might rise to the top by supporting the status quo. So we basically follow the laws in order to stay out of trouble. Because what happens if we break the law and we get caught? It can affect our ability to be licensed, it can affect our ability to drive a car, it can affect our ability, freedom. You know, the whole jail thing, which, you know, after people go to jail, finding a job becomes much, much harder. So one example is the fact that street crimes are often punished severely compared to other white collar crimes. If you will think about Martha Stewart, you know, back in the day, she was accused of committing a bunch of white collar crimes. Now she did not end up going to Alcatraz, she went to a prison. But it was more like a country club than what a lot of our clients actually see. So whether the sentencing term is longer or the sentencing conditions are worse for people who are poor, impoverished, committing other crimes, we need to kind of look at that, the motivation for people to commit these kind of crimes. If I'm thinking about committing a crime and I'm looking at, okay, if I steal a car or you know, hold up a bank, I'm probably going to go to jail for a long, long, long, long time. But if I go think about going over here and If I commit fraud or embezzle a whole bunch of money, yeah, I'm probably going to go to jail. But it's going to be one of those nice, happy jails. There's not as much. What's the word I'm looking for? It's not as punishing when I think about it. So I might be more willing to take that risk to commit the white collar crime if I'm in the position to do so. Remember, a lot of it comes back to motivation and benefit. What's the benefit to me in the long run? Deterrence and rational choice. Now this is going to be my favorite one. So, you know, just I'm biased. Behavior is not determined by biological, psychological or environmental factors acting on the person compelling him or her to commit crimes. Yes, these things exist and these factors are in the environment. They do act upon the person. You know, your environment does affect you. Your psychological state does affect you. Your biological state does affect you. But they do compel you to commit crimes. They may alter what you find as rewarding and what you find as an acceptable risk, but they don't compel you to act. You always have the choice. People voluntarily, willfully choose to commit criminal acts. When they're thinking about committing a crime, they consider the related costs and benefits. If you remember Back to tip 35, one of my favorite motivational interviewing, it's put out by samhsa. You can download it for free off the SAMHSA website. There are decisional balance exercises. And basically this theory says in people's minds they go through a mini decisional balance exercise before they commit any crime. They look at the benefit to the crime, the drawbacks to the crime, the benefits to not committing the crime, and the drawbacks to not committing the crime. Now, they probably don't sit down with pencil and paper and do it, but they have considered at least some of the options in each of those quadrants. So we have that rational choice. We have the theory that society makes people feel disenfranchised and powerless and people want to get their power back. Because we don't like feeling powerless. We don't like feeling like failures. We have the theory that labels labels an intrinsic feature of all human interaction. A complete picture of crime or deviance can be attained by examining the offenders and their characteristics and societal reactions to incidents of rule breaking. Okay, so anyway, there's a lot of verbiage here, but what we really want to look at is labeling. When we call somebody a criminal or when we call somebody an addict, many times they Internalize that. And they're like, you know, if I am that, then I guess I will act as such. When we work in recovery with people with addictions, one of the hardest things they have to kind of conceptualize is the fact that they've internalized this concept of being an addict or being a criminal and letting that go. Becoming a sober person, becoming a law abiding citizen, means basically grieving a loss of part of themselves. They know who they are as a bulimic, they know who they are as an alcoholic, they know who they are as fill in the blank. So this label becomes internalized and becomes part of who they are. Think about, you know, when we talk about parenting, the good girl, good boy phenomenon, or semantics, if you will. When you tell somebody they're a good girl or a good boy, that is a global attribution. You are good. When you tell somebody that they are bad, you're a bad boy. That's again, a global attribution. It may have been a bad decision, it may have been a bad behavior, but if you say you're a bad boy, that's that global thing saying you as a person are bad. Now, It's a small difference, but it does make a huge impact on whether people internalize themselves as being good or smart or helpful or caring or being the opposite of those. Because we all do behaviors that are the opposite of those sometimes. You know, we're human, we make mistakes. So are the behaviors bad? Or if we do a bad behavior, does that make us bad as a person? So labeling theory says once you label somebody, they're pretty much stuck with it. Unfortunately, in society, once you label somebody as having a criminal record, it does become much harder for them to get jobs. It does become much harder for them to get housing. You know, you fill out those applications and it says, do you have a felony conviction? All of a sudden, they are Persona non grata. Even if it was a poor choice, a single poor choice. And it's not hard. I mean, in the big scheme of things, it is really not hard to get a felony charge. So, you know, possession of cocaine, in theory, you know, go with me here. Maybe you actually were holding it for a friend, or it was under your seat. You were riding the passenger seat of your friend's car when you got pulled over. Well, it was under your seat. So by definition, it is yours. Therefore, you have now have a possession of cocaine charge, which is a felony conviction if you get convicted of it, which then greatly impacts everything henceforth and forevermore, unless we can Help people figure out a way to re establish their credibility as a person and take that incident and have it looked at as a specific incident, not reflective of them as a person. According to the labeling perspective, a person will generally behave in a manner that's consistent with the way in which that person believes others view him or her. So how does that affect our clients when they leave treatment? When our clients leave treatment, most of the time their family has not been participating with them, so they expect the same manipulative, egocentric person to come back that went into treatment. They are looking for the addict to come back. They are not looking for John to come back. So that attitude where the family is labeling them as you know, this is John, my addict husband, affects how he may behave and what choices he may make because he may feel very helpless to break out of that label. And by the way, on the quiz, I don't ask you which theory says which. I want you to get a general idea of what the criminal justice system is thinking about how clients or people in the criminal justice system got there and how we can help them not get back there. Okay, so the psychodynamic theory of crime is centered on the notion that an individual's early childhood experiences influence his or her likelihood for committing future crimes. Is this true? Possibly. Do I know people who had positive experiences as children with breaking the law? Yes. You know, I know people who grew up in neighborhoods where from the time that they could walk, they began, you know, being the lookouts for the people who were selling drugs, and then they moved up the system. So, yes, if it becomes something that's rewarding, certainly. But do we also know people who had really good early childhood experiences who end up later in life becoming or getting to a point where they start making illegal choices? And the answer is yes. The second is behavioral theory. And we look at modeling and social learning and all these other things. For crime. When we're looking at behavioral learning theory, and we're going to talk about these a little bit more in the next few slides, what are the reinforcers? Is it reinforcing or is it punishing? When something's punishing, we generally don't do it again. Now, there is a certain threshold, if you will. You know, not all of us like doing things, whatever those things are, but the rewards are great. For example, I hate. I just detest trimming my shrubs. You know, it's. That thing is heavy and it's loud, and then I really hate cleaning up afterwards. But when it's done, it looks so pretty. And I really like the way it looks. So the initial act of shearing the shrubs is punishing, you know, and it hurts and whatever. But when I get done and get everything cleaned up, there's the reward. It's pretty. But I was able to delay gratification. I was able to say, I will take, take the immediate unpleasantness for the long term reward. When we talk about drugs, we have to talk about what's the reward, what's the motivation to use and is it rewarding? And yeah, behavioral theory is spot on on a lot of those. But what motivates one person to commit a crime or use drugs is not the same necessarily as what's going to motivate other. Self control theory. And I have some links in your class that link to all these different theories. And I would encourage you to go look at self control theory because it is really, really interesting. Well, I think it is. According to these two researchers, self control is the tendency of people to avoid criminal acts, whatever the circumstances in which they find themselves. So if you're in a circumstance where this criminal act is really, really reinforcing, rewarding positive, but you choose not to do it because you're going to delay gratification, you would rather not risk going to jail. Whatever the cases may be, they call that self control. Low self control is the lack of that tendency or basically the preponderance to just choose whatever's more rewarding at the moment, whether it be criminal or not. They believe that low self control explained criminal acts and behavior across time, gender, ethnicity and crime types. And they did a bunch of studies and they did a bunch of regression analyses and there was a really strong correlation. So how do we define some of these characteristics? What are we looking at now? Think back to that antisocial personality we were talking about earlier and addictive traits. We know there's not an addictive personality. Individuals with low self control are characterized as impulsive. Okay, they don't have the ability or the desire to delay gratification. They have a here and now orientation, I want it, I want it now. Now. In addiction, sometimes this impulsive here and now orientation is not as much I want it, I want it now, but the pain has to stop and it has to stop now. So looking again at the motivation for the impulsivity and this here and now orientation, is it because they want to achieve something or because they need to make the pain go away or make something really, really unpleasant go away? Indifferent and insensitive? At a certain point, if you're in enough Pain, you're not going to be really caring about other people. You need to make the pain stop. You know, it's all about you. Which is that egocentric, which takes us down to self centered, jumping down a little bit, risk taking, short sighted and nonverbal. They lack diligence, tenacity and persistence. So again, you've got people who are doing what they're doing, you know, basically with no filter. It's like, is it rewarding? Is it not? They have unstable relationships and professional lives. Well, let me see if you're impulsive, egocentric, live in the here and now, indifferent and insensitive, short sighted and nonverbal. Yeah, I tend to think it would be hard to have stable relationships and professional lives, which means you don't have the social support to endure delay of gratification, to endure stress, to endure pain, and you don't have the success in the career and the financial support. I mean, you know, an upset professional life can mean a lot of different negative things. So, okay, so you've got somebody who doesn't have social supports, difficulty maintaining a job and is impulsive. They have minimal tolerance for frustration, responding to conflict physically rather than verbally. I want you to kind of put yourself in this person's position. Think of yourself as, you know, having minimal tolerance for frustration. What would cause that? Impulsivity. What would cause that? If you go back to some of the early, you know, overview writings on dialectical behavior therapy, we figure out that a lot of times we have to learn coping skills, we have to learn how to tolerate frustration, we have to learn how to endure pain, ride the wave, if you will, and not act in that emotional mind. Responding to conflict is something that's learned. We learn conflict resolution and communication skills as we grow up. So we have to ask ourselves, is the person acting antisocially or does the person not have the skills to delay gratification and approach appropriately, respond to conflict? Self control theory says the person doesn't possess or value verbal, academic or cognitive skills, problem solving, you know, communication skills, those sorts of things. Says not possessing or valuing. So the person may have skill deficits that we have to address in order to prevent relapse or recidivism. Otherwise they are still going to act in the manner in which they have already always acted. Now these researchers believe that a child with low self control is the product of ineffective child rearing. In some cases that's probably true. In other cases, you know, it may be something where the person's think of people as a pressure cooker. And they've reached their maximum limit of pressure. And they don't know how to decompress, they don't know how to let some of the steam off. So every action they take is just to keep the top from blowing off. Is that ineffective child rearing or exposure to a bunch of events that make life extraordinarily stressful and overwhelming, which lead to more impulsive activities? Make it stop. Make it stop now. Consistent supervision and discipline coupled with affection results in the proper development of self control. Maybe if we supervise and we discipline, but we also have to teach the skills, there's only so much we can take away. You know, we can teach Johnny it's not nice to hit, but we also have to teach him what to do instead. And if we don't teach those communication skills, those coping skills, those personal self soothing de escalation skills, a lot of the clients are really going to struggle to succeed without regressing to behaviors that they once learned. Socialization can be impeded by parents or environments that do not express affection toward the children. Parents who lack time or energy to devote to supervision. And it's not just parents. You know, we have children that are growing up in a microcosm or a microsystem, whatever you want to call it, the preschool teachers, the extended family, the primary family, There are a lot of people who are involved in that child's life. And where the child can receive affection, where the child can receive supervision, and it kind of takes a village. Children are varying, energetic. So putting all this on the parents, I think is a little bit unfair. But we do need to look and say what's going on in those households, that's different. Parents may not see the problem behavior for what it is. It may be something the parents already do. If you worked in substance abuse, you've probably encountered patients who learned how to use from their parents, who learned how to deal from their parents, who learned their coping skills, which are aggressive and violent, from their parents. So the parents may not see the behavior and may not see it as a problem that needs to be corrected. Parents who are reluctant to discipline children despite witnessing and understanding the child's behavior. Some parents just want to let Johnny try to work it out. Everything's a phase. And if Johnny doesn't have any guidance and molding in that behavior, then you know, the direction that it goes is a lot more questioning. And the parents that engage in the behavior, indicative of low self, control themselves. So if the parents are committing criminal behaviors or if the parents are engaged in Drug use or addiction, it's going to be hard to say, do as I say, not as I do. Social control theory says that most people would commit crime if not for the controls that society places on individuals through institutions such as schools, workplaces, churches and families. Now, Carl Rogers is probably like getting a nervous twitch every time somebody reads that. That premise because we were indoctrinated, if you will. We were taught in school as clinicians that people are basically good. They are not going to randomly go out and commit crimes and antisocial behaviors. Social controls theory says no, no, the ID is more @ play here than the superego. Yeah, you like my little influx of Freud there? So most people would commit crime if not for the controls that society places. So when people are thinking about committing a crime, if they want to achieve what they define as successful, they have to look and say, is this behavior going to impede me from doing this? If somebody wants to become a lawyer, then, you know, holding up a liquor store is probably not going to get them where they want to be. But if that law wasn't there, would they be motivated to hold up the liquor store and would they do it? Or do they have an internal moral compass that would say, you know, you don't. No, that's not going to work. Social control theory says that it's society's responsibility to maintain a certain degree of stability in an individual's life. So it's society's responsibility to provide structure, make the rules and responsibilities clear, and create other activities to thwart criminal activity. So have things people can do instead of being bored and you know, going committing random crimes, have things people can do in order to get their basic needs met. The effects of poverty, such as not having enough food to eat or children being left alone at home while their parents work, plant the seeds for crime. Yeah, had a hard time with that one. Because I know a lot of children who grew up in poverty who were left home alone while their parents worked. Did they have the ability to make poor choices? Certainly. But I also know children who had stay at home parents who made just as poor choices. So I'm not sure that this isn't necessarily causative. I think it definitely leaves the door open for other influences to come in and make criminal behavior more rewarding. But I don't think we can directly say that poverty and an empty belly is going to cause criminals. Social learning theory. This is another one of those behavioral theories. Criminal behavior is learned according to the principles of operant conditioning. Woo hoo, anticipated, observed, and or Experienced rewards and punishments affect the probability that an individual will participate in a behavior and repeat it. So what does that mean? That means if somebody thinks they're going to be able to do a behavior, get a reward and get away with it, that's that anticipated, then they're going to do it. If they've observed other people do that behavior, get the reward and get away with it, they're going to be even more likely to do the behavior. If they've actually done the behavior before, gotten the reward and, you know, not gotten punished for it, then they are, you know, triply likely to engage in the behavior. The same thing is true for punishments. If you anticipate that you're going to get caught or get in trouble, you may not do it. If you've observed other people doing it and get in trouble, that's even more reason that, yeah, that's making it more real. If you've done it yourself and you've gotten in trouble for it and the punishment was punishing to you, then you're likely not going to do it again. So we need to remember that behavior is learned both in social and non social situations. When somebody's doing it, but also when somebody watches it on tv, when they hear about it, when they just kind of come up with it in their own mind, people can extrapolate from that. If they see something on tv, they go, oh, that looks like a lot of fun. Remember? Well, you may not, I may be aging myself here, but there was a show, I think it was on MTV that was called Jackass. And this person would go out there and do really, really stupid things. And there were a bunch of kids who ended up getting hurt because they saw an episode of that and they tried to emulate it in real life. So they were anticipating a different outcome than they actually got. The principal part of learning of criminal behavior occurs in those groups which compromise the individual's major source of reinforcements. So think again of Brofenbrenner's micro and macro systems. What is reinforcing or rewarding to me may not be reinforcing or rewarding to you. So when you're looking at what's rewarding this criminal behavior, you really have to get into the mind and into the microsystem of the person that you're working with. What was motivating that behavior for him or her at that particular point in time? The learning of behavior, including specific techniques, attitudes and avoidance procedures, is a function of the effective and available reinforcers and the existing reinforcement container contingencies. So again, we're going to learn things and we're going to do things if they're rewarding and it's going to be shaped. So if you learn and discriminating means that there are certain things, there's a whole category of illegal behaviors, but you may only do 5% of them because the other 95% are either too dangerous or too punishing. So that discriminates the ones that you will do. There may be certain techniques for, for example, drug sale. And you've observed those. And through learning, through observation, you figured out which ones are successful that you might try and which ones are unsuccessful that you're not going to do because it's just too risky. So by being immersed in this microcosm, it's shaping exactly which behaviors you're going to not only find rewarding, but also be willing to try. The strength of criminal behavior is a direct function of the amount, frequency and probability of its reinforcement or punishment. For example, and again, thinking about our clients, if they commit a crime 15 times and get caught once, let's say DUI, if somebody goes to the bar three nights a week for an entire year, that's what, 150 something times and they only get one DUI, what is the probability that they might go back and do it again? Because you know, 149 times they didn't get caught. So the frequency of getting caught much lower the intensity of the punishment. Whatever it was that they got for their first dui, was it a slap on the wrist? That's probably not going to deter their behavior from occurring again because let's see, a slap on the wrist or partying with my buddies three nights a week. Hmm. I think partying with buddies usually wins out as the, as the more rewarding of the two. Going along with this learning. Behavior strain occurs when the reward for pro social behavior is less than the rewards for criminal or antisocial behavior. Behavior strain occurs when there's not enough reward when you ask your child to do something, and I've seen this with parents who are working with really small children and they expect them to behave like 8 or 10 year olds and they're like, if you do your chores all week, then you'll get this reward. Well, for a three year old that is too long. Three year olds need rewards like, you know, preferably right when it happens, but at least once a day, otherwise behavior strain occurs and the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated goes down. So we need to look at, you know, for telling people they need to behave In a certain way. What are the rewards? What's the benefit to toeing the line? Most people have similar aspirations, but they don't all have the same opportunities or abilities. So you have somebody who you know, my grandmother, both my grandparents, my grandmother had a sixth grade education and my grandfather had an eighth grade education. Did they have the opportunities or abilities that I have having a doctorate? No, they didn't. But they still had similar aspirations. They still wanted to own a house, raise kids, put food on the table, all those sorts of things. But there was a lot more strain, it was a lot more stressful in many ways because those rewards were not coming as quickly. When people fail to achieve society's expectations through approved means such as hard work and delayed gratification, they may attempt, may attempt to achieve success through crime. And I italicize societies because I want us to really think about where that definition of success comes from. And when we're working with people who are coming out of the criminal justice system, many of them have been involved in the system a lot of their life or had family members involved in the system a lot of their life. So they are operating in a microsystem that in which criminal behavior is not such a big deal. So if we want them to find criminal behavior punishing and pro social behavior or law abiding behavior more rewarding, we need to help them look at their microsystem and figure out whether they want to maintain that. In substance abuse treatment we talk about changing people, places and things. When people come out of treatment, they can't go back to hanging with the same using friends at the same dive bars and doing the same things. They need to change their microsystem. The same thing is true when we have people who come out of jail or prison. They need to be surrounded by people who share a different definition of possibly success opportunity pro social activities. So reducing relapse or recidivism and remember, using illicit drugs is a form of crime. So relapse is technically breaking the law. But breaking the law is also breaking the law. And we don't want people to go back to jail when people are in jail. And this is Thursday's presentation, all that stinking thinking that we try to deprogram in treatment, that's there, that is what is going on in most of the jails. So it's hard for people to maintain that sober frame of mind and coping skills and communication skills and all that other stuff that they've been working so hard to develop. So to reduce relapse and recidivism. Both the clinician and the client need to understand the benefits and drawbacks to prosocial and criminal behavior. So it's not just understanding why you don't want to break the law, Nor is it understanding why you want to do law abiding behaviors. But what are the drawbacks to law abiding behavior? Yeah, it's hard. You know, I've had clients who have made decent money selling drugs, and, you know, we're trying to keep help them not go back to jail. So they have to go from making $30,000 a year to making, you know, 17. And that's not real rewarding to the ego or to the wallet for these particular clients. So we do need to understand what the drawbacks are to the prosocial behavior. Some of the benefits may come in the form of achieving firmly held beliefs and definitions about concepts such as success, loyalty, or being a man. So we want to work with our clients to help them define for themselves. What do you think success means? Tell me who you think is successful, and let's look at what makes them successful. What does loyalty mean? Look at some of these abstract concepts and see if we can encourage the clients to come to a more realistic and recovery supportive definition. Most theories of criminal behavior that we just went through and some of the ones that we haven't gone through, Boil down to making the more rewarding choice. Now, what makes the choice more rewarding is, you know, depends on the theory Whether it's getting out of oppression, fulfilling a label, or just choosing what's going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Part of reducing recidivism means making the criminal behaviors less rewarding to the person. And this is where we really trip up a lot. We choose things that we think would be punishing, where, you know, the person who is getting the punishment is just like, what you want to send me to jail for 30 days, fine. More than once I had clients that were doing chores in residential, they were on extended limits of confinement, and they were just like, please, just send me back to jail. It's a whole lot easier. Let me do my time straight, and then I'll get out. Because it was more punishing to have to participate in that environment and be held accountable for activities. Rewards are the same way. We need to understand what's rewarding and what's punishing to the client, not to us. Part of the rehabilitation process may involve examining definitions Using the frames approach, Feedback about what really success means, how many people are really that successful if they think having a 10,000 square foot mansion and 17 cars or whatever the case may be, okay, let's look at how many people actually have that and you know, let's look at some other people in your life that you think are successful and how do they differ? So provide feedback on, and feedback on social definitions of what that means. You know, not necessarily that theirs is wrong, but let's look at some alternate definitions. Put the responsibility for change on their shoulders. They're only going to do what they want to do. So we give them the information, they're going to take it in and make choices based on what they find most rewarding. We can provide advice. One of the things I used to tell my clients was that they needed at least while they were on papers, which, you know, on probation or parole, they needed to do the next right thing. So, you know, I provided some advice because generally if they could do it for that long, they'd already start to become ingrained in pro social behavior. Provide a menu of options. Okay, you don't want to work at Wendy's, or you don't want to work at McDonald's or you don't want to work stocking shelves. Let's figure out what your options are for employment besides selling drugs. Find a menu of options, things that they can do, maybe different training opportunities, and then provide empathy. It's hard to make a change and it's hard to do things that, you know, you never thought you would find yourself doing. So providing empathy about how embarrassing it may be or how they may feel guilty or remorseful is important to maintaining that motivation. Help them develop communication, coping, life and occupational skills. Pretty. The majority of clients I worked with could use help with all of these, especially the ones who had spent the majority of their young lives, you know, up up into through their 20s, in and out of jail. A lot of times they hadn't developed the lion's share of these. So in order to help them avoid recidivating, they need to develop these skills. Learn how to react to stress and anxiety and frustration with words instead of physically. Learn how to manage time, show up at a job, write a resume. Ensure frequent rewards for small achievements. Not holding out and saying, well, once you find a job, then you'll get this reward. You know, let's provide rewards for at least going out there and trying and putting in three resumes a day. And we need to explore societal interventions to make prosocial choices more rewarding. In Florida, one of the I don't know if it's still happening, but The Florida unemployment. I don't remember what it was called right now, but anyway, if somebody was on unemployment, they could go down to the work resources office. If they had a criminal conviction, the office would actually bond them. So if people hired them despite having a criminal conviction, if the person, you know, made a poor choice, then the employer was covered. And that gave the people with criminal offenses on their record the ability to try to re establish themselves in the workforce development. That's the word I was looking for. And housing, which is contingency enforced. Now, I know a lot of our subsidized housing says they have contingencies. They're not enforced. The housing actually needs to be contingency enforced. Making sure there's, there are no drugs being used or sold on the premises. Making sure everybody there has a job or is doing something to get a job. These are only two of the different options that we need to look at. But we do need to look at making sure that despite past choices, people can succeed if they decide that they're ready to make the next right choice. Otherwise, it gets very frustrating if every time they go to apply for a job, it's like, well, you've got a felony conviction, you don't even get an interview. So. Okay, anybody have any.