Motivating Offenders to Change: A Guide to Enhancing Engagement in Therapy

Motivating Offenders to Change is a readable text approaching the problem of treatment engagement in correctional settings from a scholarly perspective. It may be a useful resource for students and those involved in program planning and evaluation. According to the editors of the Wiley Series in Forensic Clinical Psychology, the goal of the series is to “offer authoritative and critical information through which forensic clinical practice can develop.” The volumes in the series are intentionally not practice manuals or “cookbooks.” This edited text is consistent with the aims of the series and succeeds at providing an overview of numerous approaches to engaging a notoriously difficult population in treatment.

The first section includes three chapters devoted to understanding motivation for change. The first chapter reframes motivation from a treatment selection criterion (i.e., offenders must be motivated to participate in/benefit from treatment) to a treatment need (i.e., motivation as an initial target of intervention). The second chapter, co-authored by Bill Miller, presents a model of motivation that will be familiar to anyone who has read the second edition of Motivational Interviewing , with particular attention to the offender population. The third chapter presents an individual case formulation approach, which takes into account a variety of contextual/situational variables along with motivation to develop a treatment plan. Notably, assessment is presented as an ongoing process whose depth is determined in part by the client’s readiness to continue.

The second section illustrates motivational enhancement in practice. Chapters include application of stages of change to the offender population; building the therapeutic alliance (more from a psychodynamic than an MI perspective); MI with offenders; use of participatory theater; and, using resources in the natural environment to support the change process. As is typical of an edited volume, there is some variability in the chapters, but all are readable at a graduate/professional level. Most chapters emphasize theory and empirical support in the development of suggestions for practice; most chapters do not include illustrative case examples or “how-to” guides for the clinician.

A third section addressing “special issues” includes a chapter on ethical concerns when working with coerced participants; a review of the literature on effective programs, with guidelines for practice at the program level; chapters on management of “denial,” psychopathy, and offenders with mental disorders; a chapter on the role of punishment; and, a consideration of future directions. From the perspective of one with limited experience with offender populations I found the chapters on ethics, effective programs, and psychopathy to be especially valuable.

Deborah H. A. Van Horn, Ph. D. – originally posted June 16, 2006