NCJ Number
77798
Date Published
1979
Length
0 pages
Annotation
In this videotape Dr. Douglas K. Griffin of the Education and Training Division of the Canadian Correctional Service interviews four leading scholars on the relationship of crime and reason and its application to correctional programs.
Abstract
Interviews are conducted with Dr. Stanton Samenow, clinical psychologist and Director of the Center for Responsible Living, Alexandria, Va; Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, Professor at Bar-Illan University, Israel; Dr. Carl Haywood, Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn; and Dr. Douglas Ayers, Professor of Education, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Samenow describes the hard-core criminal whom he has studied extensively as a person who views lying as a way of life, people as pawns, and love, trust, and loyalty as foreign concepts. To counteract these thinking patterns, Dr. Samenow encourages the criminals to report on their thinking in detail and to learn to correct their thinking errors. Dr. Feuerstein sees crime as produced by a different way of thinking and uses techniques of instrumental enrichment to help the delinquent adolescents that he works with to learn from their life experiences. Dr. Haywood describes the thinking of delinquents as 'inefficient,' (i.e., they do not think through the consequences of an act, weigh alternative courses, or weigh values in a critical manner) and concludes that unintelligent behavior is sometimes a result of such thinking. Dr. Ayers, who conducts university-level programs for inmates, describes inmates' thought characteristics as egocentric and showing an inability to deal with power and authority. He states that the courses he teaches can help the inmates to learn that there is more than one side to an argument and that it is possible to take the other side. All participants agreed that correctional education should emphasize both moral and cognitive development.