Changing Behaviour

DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL PROGRAMME

Text taken from national report entitled, 'Inward Change for Lasting Effect'. 

"We know from our own lives that there are times of significant enlightenment that affect how we do things in the future. There are many offenders who have experienced moments like this while attending an accredited programme. The programme has helped them change for themselves and the way they live their lives."

A trainer for programme tutors

An increasing number of offenders are being ordered to complete intervention work such as a cognitive-behavioural based programme while serving their prison or community sentence.

The cognitive-behavioural approach proposes that acquiring better ‘thinking skills' will enable motivated offenders to make choices that will enable them to move away from an offending lifestyle - a lifestyle that has been the result of poor judgement or negative influences.

Programme participants learn how to cope with pressure, consider the consequences of their actions - and to see things from other people's perspectives.

Accredited programmes can be tough and demanding, particularly for some offenders, who have to confront their beliefs, as they learn new skills and acquire knowledge to stop further offending.

The ultimate aim of each programme is to empower offenders to use their new skills to deal in an effective, lawful manner with future problems or certain situations that have played a contributory factor in their past offending.

The National Probation Service delivers a general offending behaviour programme, at least one of the sex offender treatment programmes; an anger management programme such as Controlling Anger and Learning to Manage (CALM); an accredited Domestic Violence Programme; and the Drink Impaired Drivers' Programme.

Most Probation Areas have a programme to address substance-related offending, and some deliver the women's acquisitive crime programme and the cognitive skills booster to specific groups.

In Leicestershire and Rutland the programmes team run a range of programmes which include: