Moral Recognition Therapy

Expand the discussion section of this paper and additional resources.

Moral Recognition Therapy

Introduction

Moral Recognition Therapy tends to be an organized treatment approach, which looks to minimize recidivism found in adult and juvenile law breakers by enhancing moral reasoning. It happens to be a cognitive-behavioural approach that joins basics from a number of psychological behaviours to gradually address social, ego, positive and moral behavioural development. MRT adopts the system of individual and group counselling via recommended homework assignments and planned group exercises. The workbook of MRT is organized in16 accurately distinct steps, emphasizing on seven simple treatment matters: confrontation of attitudes, behaviours and beliefs; valuation of present associations; strengthening of encouraging habits and behaviours; positive uniqueness development; improvement of self-concept; minimization of pleasure-seeking and growth of frustration acceptance; and growth of greater moral reasoning stages. Members normally meet in specific groups twice a week and can finish all stages of MRT by 3-6 months (Armstrong, 2003).

The Problem

Typically the psychologists who adopt MRT are known to use laboratory experiments to facilitate the behaviour study of the offenders. This is due to the fact that the cognitive method is normally a scientific one. For instance, members will be involved in memory testing under strictly organized conditions. Though, the extensively utilized lab experiment happens to be condemned for missing ecological rationality. The MRT program has been disapproved because of placing excessive blame on people for their felonious behaviours while disregarding the economic and social causes of crime (Bersoff, 2008). Thus, it emphasizes solely on the problem’s ‘nature’ instead of the ‘nurture’, and might be considered as a reason to move accountability on discrete traits.

Factors Bearing on the Problem

When using the MRT program, most research, usually includes only the young males in America, which proposes that ethnicity, gender and race are not appropriately deliberated. Generally, the qualitative information gotten is usually not taken as being serious or given enough weight as the quantitative method, which tends to be disastrous as the qualitative information, gives significant understandings into the efficiency of MRT as professed by the criminals who saw it.

Secondly, there tends to exist an intrinsic ‘publication bias’ in some academic literatures when it comes to MRT. Successful readings are given journal superiority, which logically skews meta-analyses to comprise successful researches.

Thirdly, it tends to be disadvantageous to have much focus placed on recidivism in situations of evaluating the efficiency of MRT programs. The rates of recidivism are misleading since they do not consider what it actually means when the ex-inmates happen to re-offend using a less severe offence or the offence not embattled by any behavioural alteration program they have taken part in. Even though these circumstances can disclose information concerning the efficiency of the MRT program, they are frequently missed by experts, and their inferences misunderstood.

Furthermore, the rate of recidivism fluctuations is normally quite delicate and not directly ostensible to the community, which makes depending on them difficult. Other approaches of gaging effectiveness, like crime rates and victimization, show more variation over time and might disclose more significant data (Behrens, 2009). The recidivism matter is that, as fundamentally a measure of failure rates to assimilate and return to the public, these small variations seem to disgrace the penal system through the public eye. Even though a minor drop might be the outcome of countless efforts, it still seems that the degree has varied a little. An extremely dramatic variation is required to drive the point home that once the inmates are released from prison, the penal system has very little influence or control over them.

Discussion

It is upheld that offenders lack key cognitive skills and that this prompts them to a greater risk of criminality. MRT trains offenders these lacking cognitive skills and permits offenders to be reformed. This offers a fundamental limitation. Concentrating on the person as being exclusively responsible and affording society with a ‘free pass’ causes crucial issues such as dehumanizing the criminal who is viewed as ‘sick’ or ‘wrong’, compared to ‘normal’ law-abiding citizens.

It is concluded that an MRT program for ferocious criminals in the USA is aimed to bribe criminals into internalizing ideas of criminal identity. MRT aims to entice prisoners into thinking that they are offenders, categorized by cognitive deficits. When this is attained, it is conceivable for offenders go through the process of self-recovery. One might reason that this reflects a labelling theory, a central criminological position brought up by Howard Becker. According to Becker (2006), individuals who are likely to partake in the breaking of behaviour are seen as basically diverse from members of the rule-abiding or rule-making society. Becker employs the term “outsider” to indicate a labelled rule-breaker or divergent, who accepts the label accorded to them and views themselves as dissimilar from “mainstream” general population.

MRT fails to recognize that social and economic factors sway offender’s action on crime. Actually, the pioneers of MRT, claim that systematic and social-structural and issues like race, inequality, culture, and unemployment should not and need not be referred. Instead, explanations pertaining to crime that are founded on such notions should be overlooked. This is specifically disadvantageous to indigenous criminals whose conduct questionably cannot be scrutinized without a comprehension of the historical association between themselves and the White administration.

Since MRT concentrates merely on a person’s characteristics, it may be identified as a tool employed by the administration to lessen its role or responsibility in the transitional path an individual undertakes to become an offender. This is shown by MRT programs for female law breakers that teach them that their drug addiction, poverty, and abuse are a consequence of their own unwise thinking, instead of a lack of educational or supportive services. One should also bear in mind that MRT programs have a very actual effect on the lives of those who are thought to receive them. It impacts not only their conduct, but resolves their eligibility for bail. Failure to finish a program may pay a regular contribution to delayed or denied release. Such measures certify participation in MRT programs. However, forced participation will constantly be far less efficient than participating in an MRT process (Goodman, 2012).

MRT, being founded on psychological theory, concentrates on the individual’s inner workings and is hence less engrossed in economic or social factors. The function of government in this view is vital. The government ought to offer funding and come up with solutions to deal with economic and social issues after justice reinvestment models. Heightened access to jobs, education, and economic productivity is crucial within disadvantaged groups. MRT may be seen as an attempt to teach criminals the knowledge and skills that society has failed to offer them.

Rehabilitation programs centred on the Risk Needs Responsively (RNR) model fail to integrate the function of the larger criminal justice system. A lot of MRT programs are founded on RNR principles and hence are missing in external responsively. With rehabilitation being compelled upon criminals in return for their freedom, one must cast doubt on whether MRT is in fact providing an appealing treatment delivery service, or whether criminals are forced into these programs so as to be set free. Therefore, criminal justice agents ought to play a reassuring role in reassuring offenders to participate in rehabilitation programs (Gilbert, 2007). Additionally, the offenders must not be compelled into accepting rehabilitation programs, but instead go through a cognitive shift from pre-contemplation to self-re-evaluation resulting in an inner desire and inspiration to transform and take part in the rehabilitation process.

Conclusion

The debate that surrounds the effectiveness of the MRT programs for the criminal offenders tends to have been transitioned from the slight doubtful viewpoint of the 1980s to depict a positive research-driven viewpoint. A reliable theme in several evaluations of the rehabilitation works is the optimistic impacts of MRT programs to offender inhabitants in minimizing recidivism. The forced nature of present rehabilitation methods to inmates happens to be counterproductive in supporting inmates through individual decisions to enhance and vary themselves.

Programs have to be expedited in a private, trusting and safe surroundings where the members of the MRT program can easily be involved in constructive growth and change (Landenberger, 2005). With several programs being accessible via internet, computers provide an innovative step in the way offenders might interact and access the MRT program materials. Subsequently, the suggestions of several institutions act in combination with the ones of the ‘Computers in Cells publication’. Support individuals were seen to be recognized as significant players in the MRT programs of criminal rehabilitation. The friends and families must be able to access the inmates to be able to take part in the process of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation programs should be culturally suitable, mainly for the Local people.

Action Recommendation

There are a number of recommendations that can improve the MRT program. For this program to be operative there has to be a voluntary contribution from the inmates themselves. Research shows that banning or forcing a specific conduct does not essentially work. For instance, the majority of consumers who are compelled to abandon smoking in the mental health institutions continue smoking instantly when released. With such pressure, it is doubtful as to if the motivation of the criminal to contribute is founded on the true longing for transformation, or the unproductive wish to solely ‘tick the boxes’ with the aim of gaining release. And whether the latter happens to be the situation, it is solely a period of time prior to the criminals going back into this series of the old habits.

Therefore, if long-lasting transformation is to take place it has to come from inside instead of being forced. Preferably the delivery of the MRT programs has to encourage the participating members to steer through a number of motivational phrases. These phases are the planning, pre-contemplating and contemplating phases (Little, 2005).

Rehabilitation will tend to be highly effective when the members join in for the correct motives. The inmates are compelled to finish MRT programs so as to be released. It is advisable that the MRT programs adopted in prisons have to be voluntary, not enforced. This might not generate internal inconstancy inside the system itself. It is by now the situation that defines for the prison sentences imitate societies assorted desire to rehabilitate, punish and defend itself.

For the MRT programs to become effective, backing from non-prison and private personnel support tends to be important. Trusting and private environments are vital in allowing prisoners to accept self-development and cognitive transformations. Treatment implements in this deference are vital as they happen to play a key part in the formation of engaging and supportive environments for the delivery of treatment. Likewise the non-prison individuals who happen to be unbiased and independent are of greatest significance in forming these therapeutic and productive surroundings. A close investigation of backing provided to curative services for the rehabilitation reasons is needed, i.e. from the acquiring of the criminogenic requirement valuation tests to commissioning the program enablers. Transparency and accountability mechanisms inside the correctional facilities is essential.

While the MRT programs have been known to minimize re-offending over the initial year once released, positive effects of the MRT program might not be upheld over extended periods. This shows that the MRT program is restricted to allow extended treatments for restoring good behaviour. However, questionably this discovery merely proves the necessity for continuing MRT to the released inmates (Emons, 2003). It will be successful if understanding non-professionals potentially take part in such treatment.

Also for the MRT programs to attain effectiveness the criminals have to be surrounded and equipped in a desirable community. For instance the ‘computers in cells’ offer extra access point where the criminals might get support from friends and extra supportive systems amongst individuals. Computers might also enable the inmates to access MRT programs individually, and relate to the MRT content by upholding development diaries and understanding the course content.

References

Armstrong, T. A. (2003). The Effect of Moral Reconation Therapy on the Recidivism of Youthful OffendersA Randomized Experiment. Criminal Justice and Behavior. doi:10.1177/0093854803256452

Becker, P., & Wetzell, R. F. (2006). Criminals and their scientists: The history of criminology in international perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Behrens, C. (2009). Evaluating the effectiveness of Moral Reconation Therapy with the juvenile offender population.

Bersoff, D. N. (2008). Ethical conflicts in psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Emons, W. (2003). Escalating penalties for repeat offenders. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Gilbert, P., & Leahy, R. L. (2007). The therapeutic relationship in the cognitive behavioral psychotherapies. London: Routledge.

Goodman, A. (2012). Rehabilitating and resettling offenders in the community. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Landenberger, N. A., & Lipsey, M. W. (2005). The positive effects of cognitive–behavioral programs for offenders: A meta-analysis of factors associated with effective treatment. Journal of Experimental Criminology. doi:10.1007/s11292-005-3541-7

Little, G. L., & Robinson, K. D. (2005). How to escape your prison: A moral reconation therapy workbook. Princeton, NJ: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic.

………………….Answer Preview……………

Moral Recognition Therapy

Introduction

APA

3,370 Words