NCJ Number
205374
Date Published
2004
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This chapter presents the argument that rehabilitation and treatment effectiveness, based on psychological principles and the use of cognitive-behavioral programs, as well as actuarial risk and need classification systems takes for granted a number of assumptions about the appropriateness of treatment programs for different clients, specifically regarding gender and ethnic and cultural differences.
Abstract
This chapter was based in part on a study of the implications on a body of work for women prisoners in Federal Canadian prisons and questions regarding the current vogue for cognitive skills-based programs. It maps out how gender and diversity were left out of the development of two very popular correctional and research-led movements in Canada, the development of risk/need assessment and classification and the promotion of cognitive skills programs, both of them associated with the re-emergence of rehabilitation. In addition, it began mapping out questions for further research and considered the implications of these issues for penal policy. The intent of this chapter is to stimulate a debate on practices of risk-based governance as they relate to What Works in corrections and in particular female and non-White correctional populations; and to enhance the gender and ethno-cultural specificity of correctional research policy and operations as they relate to security classification and risk/needs assessment. Links that are more concrete need to be made between theory and research, policy and correctional practice, and the relationship between these spheres in terms of how risk is operationalized and managed. References