Working with Dangerous People: The Psychotherapy of Violence PDF
Preview Working with Dangerous People: The Psychotherapy of Violence
Working vvith Dangerous People The psychotherapy of violence Edited by David Jones Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist Therapist, Assessment Unit Grendon Prison United Kingdom Forewords by Christopher Cordess Psychoanalyst Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry University of Sheffield and Terry A Kupers Psychiatrist Institute Professor The Wright Institute Berkeley, California Boca Raton London New York CRC Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First published 2004 by Radcliffe Publishing Published 2018 by CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300 Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742 © 2004 by David Jones CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business No claim to original U.S. Government works ISBN-13: 978-1-85775-824-5 (pbk) This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www. taylorandfrancis.com and the CRC Press Web site at http://www.crcpress.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by Anne Joshua & Associates, Oxford Contents Forewords v List of contributors xi Introduction David Jones 1 Part One: Mainly theory 7 1 The disturbed disruptive Hans Toch 9 2 Some ethical issues in psychodynamic work with dangerous people Mark Morris 15 3 Science, meaning and the scientist-practitioner model of treatment Agnes Petocz 25 4 Psychopathy: the dominant paradigm Mark Morris 43 5 Changing people with programmes Richard Shuker 55 Part Two: Mainly practice 69 6 Thinking under fire: the prison therapeutic community as container Andrew Downie 71 7 Working with the unbearable Liz McLure 81 8 Responding to injustice: working with angry and violent clients in a person-centred way Gillian Proctor 99 9 Violence, sexual offending and sexual abuse: are they linked? A qualitative research study Michael Parker 117 iv Contents 10 Murder as an attempt to manage self-disgust David Jones 131 11 Working at the coalface Jane Coltman 143 12 The concept of dangerousness and younger people Celia Taylor 153 13 Where lies the danger? A psychodrama approach Jinnie Jeffries 165 14 After life imprisonment: the role of the probation service Catherine Appleton 175 15 Concluding comments: a humane approach to working with dangerous people David Jones and Richard Shuker 191 Index 199 Foreword It is an honour to be asked to write a foreword to this admirable volume which is in so many ways close to my heart in conception and content. Contemporary policy responses to increasing violence and a perception of an increasing prevalence of dangerous people tend towards the increasingly coercive and authoritarian; for example, escalations of surveillance, expanding legislation and a mushrooming of the size of the prison population. We have, indeed, in recent decades in Western societies, moved from a 'Culture of Welfare' to a 'Culture of Control'.1 Many of us working within the health and welfare systems related to the criminal justice system consider these policies to be barren, especially when they ignore or neglect the complex but crucial issues of institutional and prison culture, treatment and rehabilitation. Professionals working in these fields increasingly feel over-regulated and restricted by policies in which they, working at the coal face, frequently have little faith. Add to this the anxieties for the clinician of being held responsible - within the culture of blame - for even the least predictable of his client's actions, and we have the ingredients for a dangerously de-moralised system. This book, written by people with an intimate knowledge of prisons and dangerous prisoners and their mental health and welfare, offers something of an antidote to the simply coercive and repressive. In the words of the editor, it offers 'a humane approach to working with dangerous people ... It should be a basic tenet of psychological work with clients that we are prepared and able to be in sympathy with them, to have some understanding of their despair'. The rich source of knowledge and experience of the contributors is that gleaned largely from working at, or in close association with, the therapeutic com munity at Grendon Underwood Prison; the contents have wide and far reach ing applicability to all aspects of understanding the anti-social and dangerous offender. Forensic psychotherapy - the attempted amelioration of psychological pathology and criminal behaviour in the criminal offender - always operates within a triangulated system in which society, represented by its institutions (e.g. the criminal justice system), has a legitimate and important role, in addition to the therapist and client dyad. Actually, as our society becomes more and more preoccupied with risk assessment and risk management, and third party protection, society's concerns impinge upon all psychotherapy, even that which appears most 'private and voluntary' - but that is another subject. Psychotherapy, by its nature, questions the premises upon which beliefs, whether individual, institutional or societal, are held. Such a questioning is at the heart of the operation of the therapeutic community. It is a highly commendable feature of this book that it encourages examination and re-examination of assumptions vi Foreword too easily made and taken for granted. So that, whereas it is primarily concerned with 'the mind of the criminal' (and his behaviour) it also takes cognizance of 'the criminal of the mind', that is to say those aspects of ourselves which are potentially anti-social, criminal or neglectful. In this context, this may be focused down to the potential for abusive or excessively retaliatory policies or individual behaviour, and in settings of detention the ever present tendencies towards quite subtle, as well as gross, abuses of power. Our 'criminal institutions' are every bit in need of assessment and 'treatment' as the dangerous people held within them, but they are frequently even more resistant. Theory - implicit or explicit - and practice are intimately entwined in all good psychotherapy, as indeed in any criminological endeavour. For heuristic reasons, as has become traditional, this book is divided into separate theory and practice parts, but it seems to me that they are especially well integrated. I particularly enjoyed the philosophically well informed critique by Agnes Petocz of 'scientism' in psychology and the way in which the 'evidence based' movement has been applied in a form which is often a concretised caricature of its progenitor's original intention. Clearly and relatedly, it is of crucial importance in our subject that we fully participate in the contemporary rapprochement between the neurosciences and the 'psychotherapies of mean ing', rather than allow ourselves to become caught up in furthering that false divide. This volume offers a contribution to ways of thinking about dangerous people and their behaviour, and working with them constructively, respect fully and possibly redemptively. Although there is no chapter dedicated to the subject of training, super vision and professional support, these crucial aspects are implicit, and some times explicit, throughout the text. I sincerely hope that this book will be read by all those concerned with offenders in whatever capacity, from clinicians to politicians, from policy makers to managers. It will well reward their interest and attention. Christopher Cordess Psychoanalyst Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry University of Sheffield January 2004 Reference 1 Garland D (2001) The Culture of Control. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Foreword I don't believe it is overly optimistic to say we are witnessing the beginning of a paradigm shift in the field of criminology. The reigning paradigm, the one that is about to be replaced, involves an ever more punitive approach to criminal defendants and prisoners. Punish, punish, punish: less sympathy in the courts, longer sentences, fewer privileges behind bars, less recourse, tougher parole officers, more parole violations, added prison time. The singularly punitive approach has had its trial, and, in the minds of many policy-makers and correctional managers, it has proven a failure. In the period that began with Robert Martinson's1 1974 'nothing works' proclamation about efforts at rehabilitation, rehab programs have been dismantled, the prisons have become massively overcrowded, and harsher punishments have been instituted at every turn. Meanwhile there is more violence in the prisons, the crime rate in the community did not fall, but the recidivism rate rose, as did the proportion of prisoners serving time merely for violating parole. The punitive approach does not help dangerous people take control of their aggressive impulses. Today, the big question is, if ever harsher punishments don't work, what will? Specifically, what is the most effective intervention with the disruptive and assaultive prisoner? The story of supermaximum security prisons in the USA is emblematic of the evolving paradigm shift. Supermaxes (also known as maxi-maxis, control units, security housing units or SHUs) exploded on the corrections scene a little over a decade ago. The idea was to curtail the frighteningly high rate of prison violence by locking assaultive prisoners in their concrete and steel cells most of 24 hours per day. Of course, there was a certain quieting of the prison yards for a while, the quarantine effect. But beyond the immediate quieting, the outcome is not as cheering. For example, there is the problem of 'maxing out of the SHU'. So many prisoners are relegated to long-term isolated confinement that a certain number of them reach their fixed release date prior to finishing their stint in the SHU. They are released into the community straight out of a cell where they had been isolated and idle for years. Not surprisingly, some of them return to drugs and alcohol and commit heinous crimes. What is surprising is that there aren't more who do so. Most ex inhabitants of supermaximum isolation cells actually keep to themselves when they are released from prison, their will to relate to others having been broken. But when any ex-resident of supermax commits a violent crime there are headlines and, of course, heated accusations about where the fault lies. The 'tough on crime' faction loudly proclaim that the heinous deed is incontrovertible proof the violent criminal element is incorrigible, and call for a halt to 'coddling' and the building of even more super-secure prisons where we can 'lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key'. The other side in the debate, viii Foreword prison reformers and progressives among them, just as passionately believe that the error was to lock prisoners in cold storage in the first place; long-term isolated confinement causes human breakdown of all kinds, including psy chosis, suicide, and in far too many cases, intensification of uncontrollable violent impulses. To the reformers, the crime spree of an ex-SHU resident means that the corrections department has failed in its mission to reduce violence and 'correct' the errant felon. After all, the first principle of inter ventions aimed at reducing violence is to make certain that the interventions themselves do not actually raise the prevalence of violence; and many commentators are coming to the conclusion that the advent of the super maximum security prison has increased rather than decreased the rates of violence in the prisons and on the streets. Of course, both sides in this very old debate haul out scientific studies to bolster their arguments. Often, the two sides utilize the same events and the same statistics to make very opposite points. An example is the fact that people who have committed violent acts in the past are more likely than others to commit violent acts in the future. This well-known correlation can be used to buffet the argument that they must be locked up for a very long time and punished severely, or the same correlation can be used to support the argument that we need to find programs that work to change the deeply ingrained habits of very assaultive individuals or else we will suffer the consequences of their repeated acts of violence after they are released from custody. Clearly, anyone who steps forward to proclaim a new, less exclusively punitive paradigm for corrections must first argue that there is scientific evidence for their approach, that the arguments of their 'tough on crime' adversaries have indeed proven a failure, and that the interventions and programs being proposed are effective in managing and rehabilitating assaul tive prisoners. If the crime rate has not fallen substantially in the face of the unprecedented imprisonment binge in the USA in recent decades, then it is not going to be possible to prevent violent crime by locking up an even greater proportion of the population. And even political conservatives are realizing the practical folly of a strategy that relies on ever tougher sentencing: it costs a lot of money to keep so many people in prison, and even with today's harsher penalties, most prisoners will eventually be released. Do we want them to come out of prison broken and embittered by the constant punishments, and by the many cruelties that inevitably evolve within a culture of punishment? Meanwhile, class action lawsuits are forcing the states and the federal government to pay more respect to human and civil rights, and that means halting the kinds of abuse that regularly crop up in the extremity of super maximum confinement. The tide is turning and a growing number of serious criminologists and policy-makers are asking what alternatives there might be to ever longer prison sentences. The state of Maryland has announced it will close its supermaximum facility near Baltimore, and other states are thinking about following suit. But there is a problem. The staff will have to talk to the prisoners. Too often in the supermax setting the officers limit their contact with prisoners to barking out orders and cussing them as they tell them what will happen to them if they deign to disobey. In the highly segregated and controlled setting Foreword ix that the modern maximum security prison has become, many staff have forgotten how to talk civilly to a prisoner, how to ask a prisoner how he is feeling and what are his needs, and how to interact casually with prisoners on the yard or in the dayroom. One can see the result in almost any maximum security prison: officers huddled in an office while the prisoners steer clear of them for fear of being labeled a 'snitch' by their peers if they engage staff in anything other than brusque exchanges. As the paradigm shifts from punitive idleness and isolation to an emphasis on educational and rehabilitative programs, the staff must learn anew to mingle with prisoners. How will they remain safe doing their work? Which attitudes and approaches toward prisoners are most conducive to rehabilitative efforts, especially when the prisoner has a history of violence? In the old days staff interacted with rowdy prisoners on the maximum security yards. But many corrections officers and correctional mental health staff have forgotten how to do that. By the time a scientific paradigm actually shifts, the founders of the next and better explanatory theory stand in the wings, ready to point the way forward. When Heisenberg's uncertainty principle replaced Newton's model, the group of quantum physicists at work on the new paradigm was already very sophisticated. During the heyday of the punishment paradigm and the supermaximum prison, the staff at Grendon Prison were experimenting with a very different strategy for managing and rehabilitating assaultive prisoners. This book is both a collection of essays about their sophisticated, pioneering approach, and a preview of the new paradigm. Authors of the very varied but always thoughtful chapters about different aspects of work with very dangerous people share in common the conviction that mutual respect between ward and warder is a cardinal prerequisite for altering the behavior of disruptive and assaultive prisoners. The authors share a preference for horizontal commun ications over strictly top-down ones, and thus they view the prisoner as a very active participant in decisions that affect him or her. The authors prefer collaborative analysis of the meaning of events to shouting orders. And the authors deeply ascribe to the principle that more and better communication between staff and prisoners is required if we are to accomplish any significant work with very disruptive prisoners. Grendon Prison has a unique history. As prison managements elsewhere in the United Kingdom and the USA turned to intensified segregation as the antidote to uncontrollable prisons, the staff at Grendon remained true to their plan to run a prison unit for very assaultive prisoners as a therapeutic community. Groups become the place to talk about the meaning of angry feelings, and there is significant evidence that the approach works, for example there is far less physical violence at Grendon than at other prisons of compar able security level. The editor has brought together in this eloquent volume the ideas of various participants in the Grendon experiment, along with others who have been thinking along similar lines. And the authors have done something quite admirable: they have reintro duced psychoanalytic concepts into the field of forensic mental health - but not in the idealistic way that August Aichhorn,2 Franz Alexander3 and Erich Fromm4 did early in the Twentieth Century. Rather, they have incorporated
The list of books you might like
