A Perspective on the Integration of eHealth in Treatment of Offenders: Combining Technology and the Risk-Need-Responsivity Model

While there are multiple ways in which eHealth interventions such as online modules, apps and virtual reality can improve forensic psychiatry, uptake in practice is low. To overcome this problem, better integration of eHealth in treatment is necessary. In this perspective paper, we describe how the possibilities of eHealth can be connected to the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model. To account for the risk-principle, stand-alone eHealth interventions might be used to offer more intensive treatment to high-risk offenders. The need-principle can be addressed by connecting novel experience-based interventions such as VR and apps to stable and acute dynamic risk factors. Finally, using and combining personalized interventions is in line with the responsivity-principle. Based on research inside and outside of forensic psychiatry, we conclude that there are many possibilities for eHealth to improve treatment—not just based on RNR, but also on other models. However, there is a pressing need for more development, implementation and evaluation research.

Personalizing Child Protection: The Value of Responsivity Factors

Personalization is an important strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of treatment that is aimed at reducing the risk of child maltreatment. In recent years, a growing body of research has appeared on how child protection can benefit from the principles of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, but no attention has yet been paid to the implementation of the responsivity principle in child protection. Put simply, this principle states that treatment must be tailored to individual characteristics of clients to optimize its effectiveness. This study was the first to address how the responsivity principle can be of value in child protection. First, a systematic review of responsivity factors in forensic care was performed. Second, the relevance of applying each factor in child protection was examined through interviews with clinical professionals working in the field, who also provided suggestions on how treatment can be tailored to each of these factors. This resulted in an overview of seven responsivity factors all related to caregiver characteristics: problem denial, motivation to cooperate with treatment, psychological problems, cognitive abilities, cultural background, practical barriers such as financial problems and social support, and barriers to specific treatment types such as group therapy. Implications and recommendations for strengthening clinical practice are discussed.

Forensic Assessment With the PAI in Correctional Samples: Implications for RNR

The present investigation examined Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) correlates of Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) scores in a sample ( N = 377) of offenders with diverse criminal histories. It was hypothesized that PAI scales with content reflective of criminogenic needs would be associated with recidivism while those indicative of major mental illness and behavioral disruption would be positively linked to responsivity variables. Several PAI scales predicted general and violent recidivism, particularly those reflective of criminogenic need. More serious profile patterns were associated with younger age, less education, lower cognitive ability, and sexual offense treatment attrition, per the responsivity principle. Finally, an exploratory factor analysis identified four PAI factors: Major Mental Illness, Extraversion, Paranoia, and Antisociality. Antisociality scores were the most predictive of general and violent recidivism. Antisociality and Major Mental Illness scores also predicted treatment attrition. Study findings suggest that the PAI can be a useful adjunct to standardized risk and need measures for RNR-informed assessment.

Barriers to Service Provision for Justice-Involved Youth

Despite robust evidence for the efficacy of the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) framework, the needs of youth on community supervision, as identified by risk–need assessments, are frequently not reflected in the services they receive. Potential barriers to recommended service were examined in 219 Canadian youths who were court-ordered to receive forensic assessments. Decreased service was associated with certain criminogenic needs (e.g., antisocial attitudes, substance abuse) that were treatment impeding in nature. Lower treatment receipt was also associated with youth whose parents were detached from the probation process. Furthermore, odds of recidivism increased when youth experienced more lifestyle destabilizers, capacity issues, and systemic barriers, even after accounting for the effect of receiving intervention for identified criminogenic needs. Results suggest the importance of addressing both criminogenic and noncriminogenic factors during probation sentences and call for greater adherence to, and expansion of, the responsivity principle to include the assessment and management of destabilizing and systemic factors.

Beyond Responsivity: Client Service Engagement in a Reentry Demonstration Program

The specific responsivity principle advises us to provide offenders with treatment that takes into account their responsiveness to treatment, tied for example to their learning style, motivation, and gender. We examine challenges to service engagement and attendance in a community-based program in a reentry setting, and consider how far they correspond with these factors. Drawing on qualitative accounts of parolee engagement in services provided by parolees, service providers, case managers, and parole officers, we identify a number of difficulties faced by clients. These include logistical factors that affect clients’ physical ability to enroll in or attend programming (such as documentation, employment needs, and transportation problems) as well as elements of program and service delivery (such as client–provider matching, therapeutic style, and curriculum factors). We conclude that we should look beyond responsivity and consider logistical factors alongside the better-recognized psychological and dispositional factors, to understand client engagement in the context of reentry.

Evaluating the responsivity principle in prison-based programs for sexual offending behavior

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which a US prison-based sexual offender treatment program adheres to the best practice responsivity principle and to shed light on why prison-based programs tend to have worse recidivism outcomes than community programs. Results will facilitate program development efforts as they transition from programming developed prior to the risk-needs-responsivity knowledge about what works in treatment. Design/methodology/approach A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods assessed treatment methods, therapeutic climate, group therapy environment, therapist style, and staff and participants’ perceptions. Findings Overall, the analyses revealed insufficient adherence to the responsivity principle. The program used methods known to be effective with sexual offenders, but with deficient implementation. In group therapy sessions, therapeutic style deficiencies were demonstrated for stimulating growth, nurturance, and direction and control. Treatment program advancement was associated with group environment declines in cohesion, leader support, expressiveness, independence, and task orientation. Originality/value Results suggest that improved treatment response can be achieved by modifying methods and style to foster participant internal control, eliminate unnecessary external control and fear-based compliance, maximize participant autonomy; implement strengths-based approaches and fewer deficit-based interventions; monitor and minimize participant shame, and create a transparent and consistent program milieu, with clear communication, individualization, and adequate resources. Study limitations include a lack of recidivism outcomes; that it is a single prison sample, excludes female and juvenile offenders, and lacks a community-based control group. Nonetheless, despite inherent responsivity vulnerabilities compared to community-based programs, this study indicates several ways that program developers can enhance adherence to the responsivity principle in institutional-based programs.

Dominant Principles and Models of Treatment Work with Adult Offenders in the Community

In its introduction the paper provides a presentation of probation activities in Croatia, many of which also imply treatment work with offenders. As part of the rehabilitation approach, the Croatian probation service follows the principles of the Risk-Need-Responsivity Model (RNR Model) and the principles of the Good Lives Model (GLM) to a certain extent. This paper analyses the RNR Model from the perspective of existing benefits and criticisms, with particular consideration of the responsivity principle, which is pointed out as especially challenging in foreign literature. The short presentation of the GLM is followed by a comparison of these two models, whose principles currently lead to great debates, due to potential differences in approaches to the offender. Models and associated principles are then analysed from the perspective of the challenge of their implementation in the performance of probation activities. The conducted analyses can contribute to the efficiency of the Croatian probation service and also be useful to scientists in the validation of the probation actuarial instrument and research of the local probation practice.

Law as an extrinsic responsivity factor: What’s just is what works!

If criminologists and psychologists have studied practitioners’ ethics, they have not integrated the legal system into offender treatment theory. Offender treatment models have, moreover, not taken stock of the Legitimacy of Justice and the Self-Determination literatures, according to which people comply more substantively, and for longer periods of time, with decisions that are made fairly, and respect individuals’ agency. It is generally assumed that despite modern mass managerial and punitive probation, practitioners and their institutions have retained their original well-meaning ethos. In this article, it is suggested that law as a system ought to be integrated into a new subdivision of the Responsivity principle: ‘Extrinsic- Responsivity’. It is further argued that it is high time for probation staff and institutions to lose their untouchable status and be subjected to legal scrutiny and procedural constraints.