Identifying and Confronting Resistance in Lifestyle Criminal Officers (From Tough Customers: Counseling Unwilling Clients, P 25-42, 1991, George A Harris, ed. -- See NCJ-132622)

• NCJ Number: 132624
• Author(s): G D Walters
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 17 pages
• Sale Source: American Correctional Association
• Publication Type: Training (Aid/Material)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Therapists who work with criminal offenders who approach crime as a lifestyle rather than as a series of isolated events must be aware of these thinking patterns and work to expose their erroneous basis.

Abstract

These offenders represent only a small proportion of the total criminal population, but they commit a majority of the serious crimes. Their four behavioral characteristics are irresponsibility, self-indulgence, interpersonal intrusiveness, and social rule-breaking. To resist change, they have also developed justifications, rationalizations, and excuses based on their life conditions, choices in response to these conditions, and resulting thinking style. This resistance is mainly cognitive and follows one or more of eight irrational patterns: mollification, cutoff, entitlement, power orientation, sentimentality, superoptimism, cognitive indolence, and discontinuity. Counselors should use specific techniques to confront each pattern. Case examples, chart, and 17 references