A discussion of whether offenders should be motivated or confronted by their crimes.
This paper looks at why and how specialised skills in interviewing have been developed in the treatment of offenders to prevent recidivism. It examines confrontational and motivational techniques in working with offenders and discusses how these techniques are employed and how they work. It also evaluates the benefits and hindrances of these techniques and assesses which technique is more beneficial to preventing offending behaviour.
“Research carried out in the 1970’s argued that imprisonment and rehabilitative with offenders did not make a significant change to the recidivism rates of offenders and this led to more critical analysis which showed that some interventions could work. The Criminal Justice Act 1991 put more impetus to this by reconstructing the sentencing framework and recommending community sentencing for offenders unless the offence was serious enough to justify a prison sentence. Punitive measures have done little to arrest the increase in crime and it is difficult to demonstrate that punishment achieves the effect of deterring offenders from re-offending (McGuire 1995 cited HTO Davies, S Nutley and P Smith 2001 p93) Research showed that offender treatment programmes could work to reduce rates of re-offending.”