n Offender Who Wants to Change: Sincerity v. Conviction? The scope of the task of change is vastly greater than he imagined. During forty three years of evaluating and counseling offenders, I have encountered many who profess to want to change. Their motives vary as they assert they want to become responsible and give up a life of crime. Some speak of change after an arrest and they are facing prosecution. Some make such statements after the door of the jail or prison has slammed shut either before their trial or after. And there are those, albeit few in number, who are self-referred and are not facing legal proceedings. I have no way of knowing at any given time whether an offender is making statements about change simply out of desperation and to seek a better outcome for a legal proceeding or whether he has a genuine desire to live a different life. One should not be gullible and take statements of a desire to change at face value. On the other hand, there is no point to responding with unbridled cynicism for that makes establishing a relationship with an offender impossible. With many offenders, it is possible to establish that they have expressed a desire to change on other occasions in the past. These may have turned out to be statements of convenience made in a threatening legal situation. Or they may have been quite sincere. What happened, however, was that the sincerity did not translate into conviction. Such individuals did not want to continue a life of crime (risking incarceration, injury, or even death) and hurting people who care about him (e.g., parents, children, significant others). They thought they wanted to embrace a different lifestyle. However, as it turned out, they had unrealistic expectations. They thought change would be easy, that they would meet their goals quickly, and receive positive feedback from others and achive instant wealth. Their lifelong pattern had been to pursue any means to an end and to become bored with activities that did not offer excitement. They are like short distance sprinters, not long distance runners. The ongoing effort necessary to do what is required and the deterrence of criminal thinking seem like the proverbial perpetual rolling of an enormous boulder up a hill. They quickly become disenchanted. Old patterns do not die or even diminish without great effort. continue to... psychologytoday/blog/inside-the-criminal-mind/201308/offender-who-wants-change-sincerity-v-conviction
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:31:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015