Keeping a Respectful Eye on Crime Prevention: A Response to Birgden

There is much in the work of Dr. Astrid Birgden that we admire. Birgden (2004) opened Andrews’s eyes to our inattention to respect for personal autonomy as a basic value underlying our psychology of criminal conduct and the RNR approach. That will be corrected in the fifth edition of Andrews and Bonta. In addition, making human rights part of a model of rehabilitation is a very attractive idea. An explicit statement of human rights may prove to be much stronger and more prescriptive than the RNR principle of ethical, legal, just, humane, and otherwise normative applications. We look forward to studying her forthcoming normative framework for forensic psychologists. We also hope that future research will provide useful information in regard to motivational issues because current knowledge is limited. But that limited knowledge is not without value. For example, Chris Trotter (2004) has produced a model of social work practice with reluctant clients. That model builds directly on the risk–need–responsivity (RNR) principles of relationship and structuring skills.

We have no interest in commenting upon the assumptions that Birgden says led to our dismissal of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ). We did not and do not dismiss TJ. The main purpose of our article was to describe the RNR model, the underlying theory of human behaviour and its potential contribution to crime prevention in the context of justice. Responding to our article through promotion of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the promotion of the Good Lives Model (GLM) misses the point.

The phrase crime-prevention jurisprudence (CPJ) calls for a primary role for crime prevention without its being overridden by appeals to due process, just desert, retributive justice, restorative justice, and the enhanced well-being of offenders. Now Birgden (2009) has added the promotion of TJ and GLM to the list of ways of discounting the service objective of reduced recidivism. Of course, crime prevention through human service must be offered in a normative context! That is true for all human-service interventions, and it is not an invention of TJ or GLM. “Ensuring autonomy will lead to enhanced engagement in offender rehabilitation and so enhanced community protection.” Where is the evidence that autonomy leads to enhanced engagement? More importantly, even a casual review of our Table 3 (Andrews and Dowden 2007: 452) shows that engagement in programs that were not in adherence with RNR did not reduce recidivism. RNR users are encouraged to be collaborative and to target enhanced well-being for motivational and humanitarian reasons. However, if they seek reduced recidivism, it is best to also adhere to the key clinical principles within RNR (see Table 3, row 12 in Andrews and Dowden 2007: 452). There is no evidence that enhanced engagement in GLM-based rehabilitation enhances community safety. On the other hand, there is a wealth of evidence that participation in RNR programming is associated with reduced re-offending.

“An offender rehabilitation model that fails to address offender autonomy cannot claim to enhance well being or to be ethical, humane or respectful,” states Birgden. She is utterly dismissive of the ability of human service, correctional, and forensic workers to enhance well-being and to implement RNR in a normative manner. Unlike Birgden, we are confident that RNR adherence is possible in a normative context.

Programs designed in adherence with RNR develop rewarding alternatives to criminal activity and thereby reduce criminal victimization. Typical intermediate targets were listed in Table 2 of Andrews and Dowden (2007). Many of the intermediate targets entail enhanced well-being of the offender, but GLM-based critics typically avoid deviating from their script in treating the relative nobility of GLM. They also rarely attend to the RNR principle of specific responsivity or the RNR concern for motivation, strengths, and reducing personal and circumstantial barriers to treatment.

Birgden says that the RNR model has been “roundly criticized” by a growing number of scholars. The many critics are basically Tony Ward and his colleagues and Kelly Hannah-Moffat and her colleagues. Anyone who searches for the evidence base of GLM in regard to valid assessment and effective...