Recommendations for the UK Government to Cope with Criminals - Essay Example

Service Profile within the Voluntary Sector Background in the service As Clarkson and Pokorny (1994) say, it has been proven that the way criminals behave is determined by their mental and psychological processes. In this regard, it is possible to reform criminals and help them to start thinking in a more positive way and thus rehabilitate them from criminal behavior. This is where forensic psychologists come in (Arrigo & Shipley, 2005). Forensic psychologists work with criminals and try to help them to reform their thinking and this helps them to reform from criminal activity. The ethos of this is that criminality is a psychological issue that needs to be solved from this angle as opposed to just sending criminals to jail. Forensic psychologists work on the ethos that it is more efficient to rehabilitate criminals through therapy as opposed to sending them to incarceration. It is hinged on the belief that it is not only possible but it is also better to rehabilitate the criminals through giving them psychological counseling (McLeod, 2004, 2009). Forensic psychologists believe that the traditional way of rehabilitating criminals is not only ineffective but it is also dangerous in some cases. The code of ethics that must be applied have to do with confidentiality of the patients information. Those involved in the forensic psychology practice have to protect the patient from harassment and so they must not share the information that the patient has shared with them. For instance, they must not give information that is incriminating to the police with regard to the patient. Its goal is to aid the patient to reform and to become between by altering the way they think. Appointments The patient will be meeting with their designated therapists for two session in every week. The person will be given therapy through given them counseling and also by giving them assignments that will help them to transform from their criminal behavior. There will be various ways in which the sessions will be carried, based on which is the most convenient for both the service givers and the patients. For instance, because some participants may be in prison, the best mode of delivery would be to go there and have a session there. Those who may be in high school (young people) will have their sessions designed on the way that best suits their needs. They can attend the sessions on weekends when they are not attending school or there can be an arrangement with their school to help them to be able to deal with the issue. They can also attend their sessions in the evening if they are geographically close to their therapists. Paying The patients will not be expected to pay anything for the services. This will help in maintaining them and improving their adherence to the training. The main reason for not requiring the patients to pay is that this category of patients may not have a good attitude towards this kind of therapy and they may regard it as a waste of resources such as time and money especially in the first few days. Additionally, most of them may not be doing well financially and so putting a price tag on the service would mean that most of them may not be able to perform. Some of the participants will also be high risk youth who do not have their own source of income and who may come from poor families. As a result, giving the service for free will however make it possible to make sure that they can adhere to the therapy. However, if the patient does not pay, there will be the issue of the fact that money has to be gotten from somewhere because the project has to be financed. The project will therefore seek funding from government and other nongovernmental sponsors. To minimize costs, the project will seek to use as many volunteer councilors who will need minimal or no pay. Long term work Long term work will be geared towards helping the patients to be able to reform. This will be achieved in two main ways as follows; Counseling As defined, counseling will be geared towards helping the patients to change their thinking into a more positive way in order to make sure that they can change their life. In this regard, the counselors will have a very important role to play in helping these patients. The counseling will go on for a period of six months and will be geared towards making sure that the patients have been changed. However, if the goals about a patient are not achieved at the end of the six month period of therapy, the therapy can be extended. Helping the patient to gain a new lifestyle It must be noted that helping the patients to gain a new and positive way of thinking will not in itself mean that the patient had been fully reformed. There will be a need to also help the patient to be able to change their lifestyle (Milner & palmer, 2001). There are so many criminals who are affected by their economic conditions and this pushes them to crime. Therefore, the program will also be geared towards assisting these kinds of people to change their lifestyle, such as helping them get a job. This will be a long term project which will be geared towards ensuring that the patients have not only received therapy about their thinking but that they have been helped to turn their lives around. The success will be assessed by how the project has been able to change these patient in the long term and not in the short term, as a result, the reformed patients will not only be assisted to turn around their lives but will also be followed up on and this will mean that the project will use a longitudinal one for every patient who will be treated. Those who have been successfully reformed can later be used as part of the project and used as peer councilors to those who are in the therapy. Short term work The short term work for this project will be to do the following; Recruit people to give the therapy Professionals will be looked for and recruited. As has been identified, voluntary therapists will be the ones who will be sought after in order to market the project to be feasible. The process of recruiting the therapists will involve looking for application and then screening them for the most qualified, academically, professionally and also in other elements such as availability. Recruiting the patients There will be a process of getting the patients and also recruiting tem into the therapy. There will be a process of looking at those who are most qualified, or those who are most in need of therapy. Once they have been identified, the short term goal will be to convince them to accept the therapy. One of the most critical issues with therapy, especially in forensic counseling is that the patient may be averse to the counseling and this affects their adherence to the process of counseling (Tyndall, 1993). Without the right level of adherence by the patient, it would then be impossible to help the patient to change. Patient adherence can be improved by first letting the patient understand the process and how they stand to benefit if they adhere. This will reduce the negative ways in which the patient can view the program and thus help in making sure that the project is a success. Training the service providers Although service providers will already have been trained psychologists, they also need retraining in order to prepare them for this particular type of work. In this regard, a short course on how to deal with this kind of patient will be given to those who will be selected to be the service providers. There will be a structured reporting that will aid to maintain order. At the same time, the patients will be given an opportunity to report their therapist at any time if they feel that either the therapist is not being effective or he or she is not being professional about this work. A trainer will oversee the process and only those who will successfully complete the course will be allowed to be service providers. High standards will be applied in this process in order to make sure that only the best and those who are able to help the patients can succeed. This as Huss (2008) says is very important for the success of the program. The process of recruiting and training the service providers will consider the fact that this is not normal psychological counseling. However, because there are a lot of colleges that are offering courses on forensic counseling, it will be easier to get these people and then retrain them for the purposes of the project. The Clients The clients will be sourced from different sources. Prison These clients will constitute convicted criminals who are already in prison. The project will work closely with the prisons to identify those who are eligible to be involved in the program. They will take the program when they are still in the prison and hoping to reform them while in prison before the end of their term. Those will qualify will benefit from the program by being visited twice a week by a therapist and having a session. The therapist will works closely with the orison staff to monitor the progress of the patients. This will help in managing the program and making sure that the program is effective. If no progress is noticed, there will be a need to change some elements of the therapy in order for good results to be achieved. Criminals on parole Criminals in parole will also make a good kind of patients who can benefit from this. These criminals wil be better for this program because they are more accessible than those who are already in prison. They are also leading a normal life in the community and so it is easier for them to come experiment the skills they learn from the program. High risk youth High risk youth will also benefit from this program. High risk youth are those who, due to circumstances are at a high risk of engaging in crime. As Day and Ward (2012), argue, they are likely to come from the poor neighborhoods. These high risk youth may not even be adults and may be under the majority age. Dealing with them may be faced with various challenges such as them being ignorant of the need to be reformed, or being busy with school time. Recruiting Those in prison and want to be in the program must not be serving a life term. In this regard, selecting the beneficiaries from the prison will have to consider this factor. The rationale behind this is that these people are incarcerated for the rest of their lives and so may not benefit from the program because even if they reform, they are not likely to go back to society. These people are usually those who are convicted with crimes such as murder, robbery with violence and other major crimes. For those in parole, they will also be screened to find who is most qualified. They will be screened in terms of getting how badly they need the service. Those at high risk of rescinding to crime will be considered. The biggest challenge will be getting the high risk youth. To get them, the project will work together with organizations that work with these youth. They will be identified and interviewed to see if they need the therapy. The project will also depend on such organization to suggest the youths they would like to be included in the program. Once the participants have been identified, they will be recruited in batches to make the management easier. The program for each participant will start by informing them about what the program is about and how it can benefit them. Especially for the youth, it will be necessary for them to be informed about the way in which the program can impact their future if they adhere to the end. Conclusion It is very clear that most criminals involve themselves in crime due to their way of thinking. Helping the criminals to reform their way of thinking will help in making sure that they are reformed from crime and they can save them a lot. Currently, prisons are filled to the brim and this is a big problems both for government and society. Criminals have a large cost on both the society and the government. The government has to feed and continue building and maintaining more prisons as time goes on. Additionally, the government has to continue increasing the number of security officers and equipment that is needed to deal with increasing crime. With the UK economy undergoing some structural changes that have brought a recession on the economy, increased unemployment and harder economic times will only mea an increase in crime. On the part of the society, the cost comes in terms of reduced productivity, the loss that these criminals cause on their victims and the lost business opportunity for the many people who may reframe from doing business if the rate of crime is too high. Dealing with crime is therefore a necessity for the government. Finding better ways to rehabilitate criminals and make them responsible citizens is so much better than just sending them to prison. It is also noted that a big percentage of criminals who get short term imprisonment are like to go back to crime after serving heir term. This indicates that the traditional way of dealing with criminals and rehabilitating them is not effective. Sending the criminal to jail may only help by removing them for society and thus protecting the society, but does little to reform them. An alternative is therefore imperative and it is necessary for this new method to be used in order to rehabilitate criminals. As a result, the need for such a program is imminent and there will be a need to implement it in the soonest time possible. However, for this program to be able to succeed, there will need to be close collaboration between various actors. To begin with, the government will need to support this program by not only financing the program but also to open up the prisons sit that the prisons who can benefit from this program will be accessible. Nongovernmental organizations will also be useful and have to support the project tin order for it to succeed. Moreover, there will be a need to make sure that that other relevant organization such as criminals rehabilitation centers are going to be involved. These centers and organizations will help in getting the people who can benefit from the program. This program will definitely be very useful in solving this problem and making sure that as many people with a criminal mind will be reframed and be made to be responsible people. It will therefore be crucial to ensure that this program is a success. Reference list: Arrigo, B., & Shipley, L. (2005). Introduction to Forensic Psychology: Issues and Controversies in Crime and Justice. New York, NY: Academic Press. Day, A., & Ward, T. (2012). Foundations of Offender Rehabilitation. London, UK: Routledge. Huss, M. T. (2008). Forensic Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Clarkson, P. & Pokorny, M. (1994). The Handbook of Psychotherapy. London: Routledge McLeod, J. (2004, 2009). An Introduction to Counselling (Fourth Edition). Berkshire: Open University Press Milner, P. and palmer, S. (2001). Counselling : The BACP Counselling Reader Volume Two. London: Sage Tyndall, N. (1993). Counselling in the Voluntary Sector. Milton Keynes: open Univeristy Press. Read More