Transforming Environments and Rehabilitation: A Guide for Practitioners in Forensic Settings and Criminal Justice

How can environments play a role in assisting and sustaining personal change in individuals incarcerated within the criminal justice system? Can a failure to address contextual issues reduce or undermine the effectiveness of clinical intervention? Bringing together a range of leading forensic psychologists, this book explores and illustrates inter-relationships between interventions and the environment in which they take place.

This book examines how the environment can be better utilised to contribute to processes of change and how therapeutic principles and practices can be more strongly embedded through being applied in supportive, facilitative environments. In addition, it expands on emerging conceptualisations of how psychological functioning and environmental context are inextricably linked and offers an alternative to prevailing intrapsychic or ‘essentialist’ views of areas such as personality and cognition.

Providing new and challenging insights and perspectives on issues of central relevance to forensic psychology and related disciplines, this book contributes to the development of innovative and unifying directions for research, practice and theory. This book will be an essential resource for those who work with or intend to work with offenders, particularly practitioners, researchers and students in the fields of psychology, criminology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and social work.

Geraldine Akerman is a chartered and HCPC registered Forensic Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and Europsych. She currently works as a Therapy Manager at HMP Grendon and is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Adrian Needs is a Forensic Psychologist by background, qualified as a practitioner with experience including 14 years in HM Prison Service. He runs the MSc Forensic Psychology course at the University of Portsmouth and through the BPS played a prominent role in steering the formulation of national standards for postgraduate training in this field. His current research interests include transition and offending in former members of the armed forces.

Claire Bainbridge is a chartered and HCPC registered Forensic Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She has over twenty years’ experience of working with offenders in a variety of settings, including prison, health, police and probation services and is currently a Consultant Forensic Psychologist within the Offender Health and Forensic Community Service at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.