Louis Berlin

Treating the criminal offender

Background.- Crime, Social Attitudes, and Causation Theories.- Probation and Parole.- Punishment versus Treatment.- Problems and Issues in Corrections.- General Treatment Approaches.- Treatment Modalities-Problems and Issues.- Schools of Casework and Therapy.- Group Therapies: Traditional and Innovative.- Specific Treatment Approaches.- Drug Addiction, Crime, and Treatment.- Sexual Offenses and Their Treatment.- The Violent Offender.- Alcoholism and Crime.- Crime and Marital Problems, and the Female Offender.- Gambling, White-Collar Crime, and Organized Crime.- New Directions.- Current Trends in Corrections.- Research in Corrections.- Summary and Sources.

The Violent Offender

The mass media depict violence to capture the attention and hence the money of the public. Lurid tales of violent crimes are sometimes featured as headline stories. TV programs depict the hero inflicting a merciless beating on the villain, who in turn retaliates in kind. Fairy tales that have enjoyed centuries of popularity contain cruelty and violence. It is not scientifically known what encouragement, stimulation, and effect such stories and programs have on individuals who subsequently commit acts of violence.1

Research in Corrections

Between 1950 and 1980, because of the stated concern of the Federal government and the interest of private foundations, an enormous amount of money was spent in an effort to develop plans and programs to deal successfully with criminals and delinquents. During that time, research had been undertaken not only to add to our fund of knowledge concerning criminals, but also, and more important, to evaluate the effectiveness of the new techniques and approaches in these programs.

Sexual Offenses and Their Treatment

What is a sexual offense? Freudian psychiatrists trace human behavior to a sexual or libidinal base. The entire spectrum of criminal behavior, from speeding to murder, is interpreted in terms of unresolved sexual conflicts. In this sense, all criminal behavior may be encompassed in the category of sexual offenses. However, this way of describing crime actually blurs differences in quality of acts and hence creates confusion in ascribing punishment and in setting up treatment programs. This is not to say that some seemingly nonsexual crimes do not have strong sexual components. William Heirens, the notorious criminal who killed females three times during burglaries, achieved orgasm by merely entering strange residences. After killing the females who interrupted his burglary, he spent considerable time washing their bodies. Heirens left a significant message scrawled in lipstick on a living room wall when he had just murdered one of the victims, stating, “Catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself.”1 The sexual meaning in this behavior is too obvious to be disputed.

Crime, Social Attitudes, and Causation Theories

We do not know what causes criminal behavior. There are many theories of causation, but none is wholly empirically validated. Those who seek causation are like the blind men touching an elephant so as to describe it. Each described the elephant as being like the segment of its anatomy that he explored. Each was partially correct, but missed the entire truth. Our theorists premise their hypotheses on an assumption either that man has free will or that he is impacted on by multiple societal or other forces. Flowing from these assumptions is either a punitive response by society to criminal behavior or a rehabilitative and treatment response. In this chapter, we discuss briefly the many causation theories and assess their helpfulness in understanding criminal behavior.

Group Therapies: Traditional and Innovative

The policy of individual treatment in penology developed as a reaction to the classic 18th-century endeavor to impose uniform penalties on criminals. The system that followed from this policy included diagnosis of individual problems and needs, prescription of therapy, and therapy by trained experts. In short, it involved an assumption parallel to clinical medicine, with its diagnosis, prescription, and therapy. A prime example of current treatment based on this assumption is individual therapy as a technique for reforming criminals.

Schools of Casework and Therapy

The correction worker today has a rich mine of therapeutic techniques that he can choose from depending on his personality and his relationahip to clients in his caseload. Some of the casework principles may make no impact on the offender, whereas an approach adopted by one of the numerous schools of therapy might evoke an enthusiastic response. In this chapter, we survey schools of casework and therapy, indicating basic principles and salient points in technique. The reader may find an approach that he believes merits deeper exploration.

Problems and Issues in Corrections

Society’s attitude toward the offender is a mixture of cruelty and humanity. It oscillates between considering the offender an evil person who should be grateful that he was permitted to live and have any rights at all and the opposite view that he is no different from the rest of us and should be treated with dignity and respect. In one form or another, each of these views appears in the philosophical, legal, social, and treatment issues presented in this chapter.

Probation and Parole

People who are not familiar with the field of criminal justice frequently use the terms “probation” and “parole” interchangeably. Two good operational definitions listed below make this distinction clearly

Alcoholism and Crime

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, social reformers thundered against the evils of drink. Articles, lectures, cartoons, and movies dramatically portrayed the misery and heartache caused by that old devil “booze.” The Women’s Christian Temperance Union not only exhorted men to abstain from liquor, but also in several instances invaded saloons and chopped up the fixtures to render the bars inoperative. The culmination of the morally disapproving attitude toward drinking alcohol was the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, known as the Prohibition Amendment, which prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol immediately after World War I. The repeal of this amendment in the 1930s revealed the proliferation of criminal activities connected with the clandestine sale and manufacture of liquor (bootlegging).