Forensic Psychology

Section 4 – After a Guilty Verdict

Exam Questions 2

Section A Exam Answers.

Look at the following examples of candidates’ answers from the June 2010 exam paper. Using the mark scheme, what mark do you think each answer is worth? Why?

Describe ‘anger management’ as a treatment programme for offenders. [10]

The anger management programme is a treatment programme used for impulse aggressive individuals who do not have control over their aggression, and they need help to realise that their aggression is not acceptable. The programme provides the aggressive people with coping strategies and different ways to deal with their anger. This programme is used in prisons, and Ireland studied criminals in prison that took part in an anger management programme before they left prison. There was a large sample group and half participated in the anger management programme, and half did not. The results were recorded by themselves and the officers in the prisons in order to make the results more reliable, and they were observed and tested by questionnaire. The participants that took part in the programme recorded that their aggression reduced by 92% on 3 behaviours, which shows that his is working and the drop-out rate for the programme was low which meant that the adherence rate was high.

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Section B Exam Answers.

Look at the following examples of candidates’ answers from the June 2010 exam paper. Using the mark scheme, what mark do you think the answer is worth? Why?

Assess the effectiveness of offender treatment programmes. [15]

Treatment programmes are used to help rehabilitation in criminals and to give them opportunities to help change, so this means that they are very useful as they are helping prisoners learn new skills. For example the study done about acupuncture in the ear to help drug addiction showed excellent results as after the treatment prisoners found that they were better at communication, generally a healthier person and have fewer needs for nicotine and there was a 70% reduction in positive drug testing, which shows that the programme was very effective for drug users, however, it is a very expensive process for prisons to do which is why it is not used in many prisons. Also it does not work everybody as individual differences. The treatment programmes only work for some people. In conclusion this biological treatment programme is very effective.The anger management programme also was very effective with prisoners as their aggression reduced by 92% which means that the programme has been very successful as it changes the strategies to deal with aggression. However they did not do the programme outside the prison, so the participants were still in a very controlled environment, which may have been the reason for the major reduction, however as soon as you put these people back into society with the same problems they had before and lots of environmental influences, this may trigger off their aggression again, and the re-offending rates may increase. Therefore it would be useful to carry on with an anger management course after release to make sure they are still able to ignore the aggressive stimuli and hold in their anger.The treatment programmes are all reductionist as they only look at one gender group and the majority of the time it is males. This does not make the studies generalisable which may mean they are less effective for women. For example only men took part in the anger management programme therefore it may not have been as successful for women, as they have different reasons for being aggressive. Likewise in the employment scheme study, where women were taught social skills to make them more employable, this made them worse off because their reasons for committing a crime in the first place are very different to a mans reasons, which means the programmes may not be suitable for both genders, which suggests separate programmes may need to be made.

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Section A Exam Questions.

1. Identify the link between imprisonment and suicide. (10)

2. Describe the restorative justice approach to managing the impact of crime. (10)

3. Describe one treatment programme used to treat criminal behaviour. (10)

4. Describe anger management as a treatment programme for offenders. (10)

Section B Exam Questions.

1. Evaluate the usefulness of research which informs us about the effect of imprisonment . (15)

2. Discuss the alternatives to imprisonment in controlling crime, using relevant research. (15)

3. Discuss the problems of conducting research into treatments for criminal behaviour. (15)

4. Assess the effectiveness offender treatment programmes. (15)