anger management Flashcards
(4 cards)
AO1
Anger management programs assume that aggressive emotional responses are cognitive processes and can be controlled with a form of cognitive behavioural therapy (individual recognises cognitive factors that trigger anger and develop techniques which bring about conflict resolution). This provides techniques offenders can use in future stressful situations.
1)Cognitive preparation: offenders learn how to assess their own thoughts for triggers of irrational aggressive emotion. Examples from their lives are used and reinterpreted.
2)Skills acquisition: ways to control anger are developed, from calming/relaxation exercises to improving communication skills to avoid conflict.
cognitive-positive self talk
behavioural-assertiveness training in how to communicate more effectively
physiological-relaxation
3)Application practice: Therapist and offender play out role play scenarios that would have caused an aggressive response. Offender uses skills developed in (2) to stay calm.
anger management has two aims:
1)Short term aim of reducing anger and aggression in prisons where it is a serious issue
2)A longer term aim of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism
strength
One strength of anger management is that the benefits may out-last those of behaviour modification. Anger management tries to tackle one of the causes of offending i.e., the cognitive processes that trigger anger, and ultimately offending behaviour. Alternative treatments such as behaviour modification deal only with surface behaviour and not the processes that drive this behaviour. Therefore, anger management may give offenders new insight into the cause of their criminality and allow them to self-discover ways of managing themselves outside the prison setting. This suggests that anger management is more likely than behaviour modification to lead to permanent behavioural change.
However, follow-up studies of anger management to not to support this assumption. Blackburn (1993) points out that whilst anger management may have a noticeable effect on the conduct of offenders in the short term, there is very little evidence that it reduces recidivism in the long term. This may be because the application phase of treatment still relies on role-play which might not properly reflect all the possible triggers that are present in a real-world situation. Any progress made in therapy may count for little when compared to a busy city centre pub on a Saturday night. This suggests that in the end anger management may not reduce reoffending as much as was initially thought.
Limitation
A further limitation of anger management is that success may depend on individual factors. Howells et al. (2005) investigated Australian offenders and found that simple participation in an anger management program had little overall impact when compared to a control group who received no treatment.
However, significant progress was made with offenders who showed intense levels of anger before the program, were open to change and highly motivated from the outset. This suggests that anger management may only benefit offenders to fit a certain profile, rather than entire prison populations.
Limitation
Finally, anger management programs are expensive to run as they require the services of highly trained specialist who are used to dealing with violent offenders. This means that many prisons may not have the resources to fund such programs. In addition, as we saw earlier, the success of anger management is often based on the commitment of those who participate, and this may be a problem if prisoners are initially uncooperative and apathetic as change takes time and this is ultimately likely to add to the expense of delivering effective programs. This suggests that effective anger management programs may not be a realistic achievement in most prisons.
