Treatment programmes for high risk offenders

High risk offenders can have a disproportionate impact on their communities because, despite all manner of sentencing options, they continue to commit a wide range of crimes, both minor and serious. It is tempting to throw the book at them, sometimes even to throw away the key. However, anything that helps offenders to change their propensity for re-offending can really make a difference.

Over the last 30 years, scientific research has guided the provision of treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration services that lead to reductions in re-offending. Much of what we know, however, comes from work with medium-risk offenders. Although this work is important and valuable, there is a lower level of complexity to working with medium-risk offenders than most high-risk offenders require.

This book recognizes the need to research and develop different approaches to rehabilitating high-risk offenders. Each of the contributions takes a different approach, with a different group of offenders, in a different setting. Cumulatively, the chapters provide encouragement for those working with high risk offenders, along with a wide range of ideas about how to develop better services.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychology, Crime & Law.

Devon L. L. Polaschek is a Professor in the School of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research interests include theory, intervention, and intervention evaluation with serious violent and sexual offenders, psychopathy, desistance and parole, and experimental approaches to offender assessment. She works closely in a number of roles with New Zealand’s Department of Corrections, making her research distinctly practice-focused, with a particular emphasis on the effective treatment of high-risk psychopathic violent prisoners.