NCJ Number
195999
Date Published
2002
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This chapter argues that the model which underpins most attempts to change offender behavior, cognitive behaviorism, is a type of governmental technology or way of regulating people's conduct that is in keeping with the current political climate of incapacitation in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Abstract
The rationale for the treatment method of cognitive behaviorism is that women offenders, as well as male offenders, lack certain cognitive skills, which puts them at greater risk for criminal behavior. The belief is that once offenders are taught these skills, they are rehabilitated and prepared to live a law-abiding life. This rationale for the cause of criminal behavior promotes the view that crime is almost entirely caused by character deficits or faults in particular individuals. Such a belief may be mobilized to support both containment and programmatic intervention. More fundamentally, it supports the political rationales of advanced neo-liberal democracies by embodying both notions of social authoritarianism (repression, punishment, and order) and free-market individualism (choice, autonomy, and responsibility). On the one hand, offenders are denied volition through coercion and force. On the other hand, they are regarded as active agents, responsible for their criminal actions and their own reformation. Both strategies individualize crime and punishment by denying the structural inequalities and oppressions within which offenders are situated. They are thus in keeping with the dismantling of the welfare state and denial of citizenship rights to the socially excluded. This chapter discusses how this trend is manifested in the new government strategy for women offenders in England and Wales.