By Harold Goldstein and Dana Gabriel, Special Contributors to Corrections1
A previous article presented a merit-based approach to a selection of inmates for correctional programming. The efficacy of such an approach is dependent on an efficient, accurate screening process that identifies potential candidates with the desired characteristics and skills that will enable them to profit from the treatment experience.
Inmate Applicants
In this model, screening serves an essential function of identifying the best candidates for treatment from the broad population of applicants. For the purpose of this discussion, inmates will be separated into three groups in order to clarify the qualities or characteristics necessary for inclusion:
Group 1: The first are those individuals who have reached a stage of development where they are desperate to change their lives, to feel differently about themselves and to stop the self-defeating lifestyles they have led to so much failure. These inmates are hungry for the treatment experience, will readily accept an opportunity to enter a program where they can work on changing attitudes, tendencies and characteristics that they identify as holding them back from living the life they want to lead. They are excellent candidates for programming, but unfortunately represent a small percentage of incarcerated offenders.
Group 2: A much larger group of inmates are embedded in an antisocial lifestyle with attitudes that are deeply ingrained and ego-syntonic, have no desire to live any other way and lack any motivation to change. These inmates are not candidates for inclusion in an intensive programming experience.
Group 3: A third group of inmates fall somewhere between these two opposite poles. They may not be inclined to introspection or have a great deal of self-insight but they do not necessarily lack the capacity for these mental processes. Awareness of painful emotions varies significantly as does the desire for change but this is the pool of potential applicants from which inmates appropriate for enhanced programming must be selected.
Screening
This treatment model is predicated on the ability to identify individuals who are ready for the change process and capable of benefitting most from treatment. The challenge is to identify individuals who are appropriate for intensive intervention in an efficient and accurate manner. Given the entrenched defensive character structure of inmates and the external pressures of the correctional environment, an approach to selection must have measurable criteria that target the specific abilities required for the program. The maturational state of an inmate in three broad areas have been determined to be essential to success in intensive programming: motivation, insight and receptivity.
As is always the case in correctional psychology, the need for accurate assessment must be balanced with time constraints and other workplace considerations.
Motivation
There must be a degree of dissatisfaction with his life. Often times, self-exploration is initiated by an existential crisis, an awareness that life has progressed for others in the outside world while they exist in a type of limbo. The inmate must recognize that it is his own personal issues that have led to repeated failures and his current incarceration. There must be a certain discontent with himself, a recognition that there is something inside him that is not right even if he does not know what it is. The motivation to change comes from this awareness.
Insight
Many chronic offenders live in a superficial world where they skim the surface of consciousness without any thought or appreciation for the thoughts, feelings, urges, attitudes, and needs from which behavior flows. These individuals do not question their own behavior nor do they not understand the behavior of others. They live in the moment, driven by urges and needs they don’t understand, caught in a self-destructive cycle of poor decision making and unsatisfying relationships. Mentalization , the capacity to appreciate the mental processes that underlie behavior, both one’s own and that of other people (Falkenstrom, Solbakken, Moller, Lech, Sandell & Holmqvist, 2014), is essential if one is to participate and contribute fully in the treatment process. The recognition that other people have internal lives and that behavior flows from these internal states, facilitating the development of interpersonal skills, social problem solving, and empathy, is at the core of the change process. The development of these abilities is a primary clinical goal of an intensive program, but potential participants must already possess at least a rudimentary ability that can be cultivated and expanded upon by the program experience.
Receptivity
In order to be successful in a program, an inmate must be capable of considering feedback about his behavior or attitudes with some degree of openness and flexibility. An inmate’s defenses must be sufficiently flexible to allow for some degree of self-reflection. A candidate for a program must have the ability to consider feedback about themselves in a manner that allows for change. Individuals with significant character pathology, particularly narcissistic personality traits, tend to have overly rigid, brittle defenses and cannot tolerate critical but potentially transformative feedback. Behaviorally disordered inmates with some combination of personality pathology that rely on primitive defensive strategies such as projection and devaluation as well as externalizing behaviors to shield their vulnerabilities. The degree to which light in the form of insight or self-awareness is allowed to penetrate these defensive structures will determine the degree to which the person can profit from the program experience.
The screening process flows from these three constructs, shaping the initial interview and forming the basis on which the candidates are evaluated once they arrive in the program. With some inmates it is apparent early on in the screening interview whether they have a genuine desire for change, the ability to self-reflect and willingness to accept constructive criticism. Many however, begin the interview by naming a generic problem that they would like to work on in treatment, such as, anger management or poor decision-making. It is these inmates that need to be questioned thoroughly in a systematic and semi-structured approach, to determine whether they are prepared for the therapeutic experience. The interview should optimally be a microcosm of the program experience, where inmates are challenged and encouraged to look inside themselves and persuade the interviewer that he is a good candidate for the program. The expectation is that as the inmate progresses in his rehabilitation, he will grow in all these areas but there must be the rudiments of these abilities sufficient to allow the change process to take hold.
Conclusion
Incarcerated offenders share many of the same risk factors for future criminal behavior – most of these men are at high-risk to recidivate once released to the community. What differentiates them from each other and determines their appropriateness for the program are personality-based qualities, some readily apparent, others more subtle and harder to assess, that are the targets of the screening process. The challenge is too efficiently assess these characteristics in an interview. The interview for an intensive treatment program should therefore assess an inmate’s motivation, insight and receptivity both through questioning and observation. Just as a program requires its participants to possess and display their readiness for treatment, so should the screening process. This approach provides information for the interviewer regarding the subject’s readiness for the treatment experience and for the inmate who has to decide whether he is prepared for this level of introspection and self-scrutiny.
Harold Goldstein received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Fordham University. He has 29 years of experience as a mental health clinician in correctional institutions and is currently the clinician supervisor at a local correctional institution.
Dana Gabriel has a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from American School of Professional Psychology. She has eight years of correctional experience and is currently working as a clinician at a local correctional institution.