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complexity perspective on work with offenders and victims of crime
A Complexity Theory perspective on working with offenders and victims provides an alternative framework that may uncover new insights into the better way of working in the criminal justice area. An effective complex adaptive system has strong autonomy and efficient connectivity. If any member of a community violates the autonomy or connectivity of another, a crime is committed. Work with offenders and victims focuses on restoring the autonomy and connectivity of those involved and the whole community, better enabling the dynamics of self-organisation to re-emerge. Offenders are seen as developing schemas supported by cognitive distortions that allow them to bypass the barriers that keep most of us from offending. This paper examines the work of the Community Probation Service in New Zealand, which uses a Cognitive Behavioural approach, and the present pilot of the Restorative Justice system, bringing offender and victim together in a mediated forum, from a Complexity perspective. Introduction Human beings, like all complex adaptive systems (Stacey, 1996), require effective autonomy and connectivity to operate optimally. A crime is committed whenever a person's autonomy is violated or their connectivity with others is significantly disrupted. Work with offenders and victims focuses on repairing the autonomy and connectivity of the offender and victim, to again become an integral part of their community. This paper assumes the best results in working with offenders and victims are achieved when the dynamics of self-organisation are supported. However, two points must be noted. Since we can never be certain of the outcome of any particular behaviour in complex systems, at times, behaviours which seem to support self-organisation will work against it, and seemingly destructive behaviours will unexpectedly result in positive outcomes. Secondly, autonomy and connectivity do not operate independently. They are dynamically interlinked and influence each other. Enhancing connectivity can impact of the autonomy of the individual agents and vice versa. Keeping this in mind, however, some broad principles can be developed, which are consistent with those used in practice, providing a theoretical basis for work with offenders and victims. Autonomy and connectivity in complex adaptive systems If there is insufficient connectivity in a system, individual agents become isolated and the entire system is less able to self organise. If there is insufficient autonomy, the lack of diversity stifles the system, also impairing its ability to self-organise. Each agent in a complex adaptive system has a boundary. This might be a physical boundary as in a cell. Cells, like all dissipative systems, require a flow of energy through them to survive. The cell boundary must, be semi-permeable allowing an interchange of chemicals and organisms with the outside environment or there can be no connectivity. Other complex adaptive systems have immaterial boundaries, such as our sense of identity. Rather than chemicals and organisms, there is a flow of experiences, each of which must be incorporated into the person’s sense of identity or rejected as harmful. Just as the cell will sometimes fail to detect a harmful organism, a person can unwisely incorporate harmful experiences into their sense of identity. Such invasions tend to give a short-term advantage to the invader, while being harmful for the person invaded and the community they live in. Such an invasion is a crime. Privacy is a key means of protecting our autonomy. If every part of ourselves is open to influence by other agents, we are no longer autonomous. We maintain areas of privacy at all fractal levels within ourselves. We have private body parts, private thoughts, private diaries, private rooms in our house or workplace, and private military installations. To significantly invade these places is a crime. The fractal nature of human beings means we have systems within systems, each with their own boundary, to be maintained. Violations of that autonomy can include a person’s physical body, their possessions, bank account, and even their reputation. Schemas Human beings have a need for a sense of meaning, security, and control or we feel anxiety. One way we meet these needs and avoid anxiety is by forming schemas (Stacey, 1994) (King, 1999). A schema is an internally coherent collection of beliefs and values that a person uses to give meaning and consistency to their interactions with the outside world. The schema acts as an attractor of beliefs and values consistent with the mode of functioning of the individual. Since a human being is fractal in nature, the schema that supports it must be fractal. If a person has a schema that justifies violence, then violence will generally be expressed in some way at all fractal levels. If the underlying belief is changed, the behaviour is generally changed at all fractal levels. A well-balanced person with a strong sense of autonomy and vibrant connectivity will have strong, effective schemas. They will have beliefs that support them and their communities. A person whose sense of autonomy and connectivity is not well balanced will form distorted and maladaptive schemas (Young, 2003) that may lead to behaviours, which violate the autonomy and connectivity of others. Whenever a person’s schema is challenged, anxiety arises. Stacey (1996) talks of anxiety containment, whereby a person uses a variety of strategies to alleviate feelings of anxiety. We often choose destructive and addictive strategies to contain our anxiety rather than dealing with the its cause. The offender An offender has chosen to violate the autonomy of other agents within their community. This takes a complex adaptive system further from self-organising. Under normal circumstances such a violation would engender feelings of guilt or shame, motivating the agent to stop and avoid violating others. An offender’s schema, however, allows those feelings to be overridden. They may be swayed by short-term gains, such as money, a rush of emotion, or gaining the esteem of peers. Cognitive distortions are used to contain the anxiety generated by the conflict between the person’s internal code of conduct and their actions. One classification of these distortions is: 1. Deny It didn’t happen at all. I wasn't even there at the time. 2. Blame He made me do it. If you knew your job, I wouldn't be here now. 3. Minimse It didn’t hit him, it was just a push. It's not as if he was unconscious 4. Justify Well, he hit me first? They can afford it, besides they'll get insurance. These alter the agent's perception of the events surrounding the offence, making their actions more acceptable to themselves and others. This reduces the anxiety and maintains their existing schema. Through habitual use, the offending schema has been canalized on the phase space of the individual. The attachment to the schema must be destabilised tipping the offender towards the edge of chaos, so a bifurcation can allow the emergence of new non-offending schema. Motivational interviewing is a technique that challenges the pro-criminal schema by highlighting the cognitive distortions and incongruities of the discourse and feeds them back to the offender. This destabilises the schema and pushes the person from their local optimum on the phase space towards the edge of chaos. The offender is supported to build a new optimum on the phase space, set on a foundation within the bounds of an attractor acceptable to the community. The worker forms a “bridge” on the phase space between the two optima to facilitate the movement from one to the other (Lucas & Milov, 1997). Wider interactions The actions of an individual committing a crime against another impacts on the whole community just as each agent affects a whole system. Some people will be friends, family or acquaintances of those involved in the offence. All community members will feel less safe. Property may be damaged and policing and justice are significant costs to a community. Unless the violation is resolved, the whole community suffers and connectivity reduces. The relapse cycle Joseph Prochaska and Richard Di Clemente (Prochaska & Di Clemente,1994) developed The Cycle of Change from their work on alcohol and drugs, which they found to be applicable generally in work with offenders. The model is presented as a revolving wheel with individuals being at one of six stages on the cycle. There are bifurcation points around the cycle which provide the opportunity to either move forward on the cycle, regress backwards, or leave the cycle of offending all together. The stages of the cycle are: 1. Pre contemplation: This person has little or no awareness of their problem and no investment in making any changes. 2. Contemplation: They now realise they have a problem, but do not have the skills or motivation to make any changes by themselves. 3. Determination: These people have made up their minds to make changes, but still have significant negative habit patterns to overcome. They can easily regress to earlier stages in the cycle. 4. Action Stage: Here people have committed themselves to the process of change. They have less likelihood of a return to offending, but the threat remains. They must cope with the realities of making changes, such as ridicule or rejection by their peers, and loss of (illegal) income. 5. Maintenance: These people have progressed and learned the skills they need to avoid re-offending, but in sufficiently adverse situations may still struggle to remain offence free. 6. Lapse and Relapse: Those who cannot maintain the necessary changes lapse back into criminal behaviour and begin the whole cycle again.  Figure 1: The Cycle of Change Adapted from the work of Prochaska and DiClemente The role of the worker is to determine where on the relapse cycle the person is, and utilise motivational interviewing appropriate to that point on the cycle to encourage the self organisation of the schema towards the next stage of development around the wheel. If he disruption to the existing schema is too severe, the person will withdraw from the process or move into deep chaos. A standpoint of unconditional positive regard (Pescitelli, 1996) is required for the person to feel supported through the process of change. A person may stay at one point on he wheel for a very long time, or quickly progress to leave the offending cycle all together after the maintenance phase. If they are not strong enough they will relapse into offending behaviour. Power Law Distributions Paul Ormerod (Ormerod, 2001, 2003) found power law distributions in the correspondences between the seriousness of offending and the number of offenders at each level. He concluded in his paper that because offenders’ behaviour fitted a power law distribution as distinct from those who had not yet offended, priority should be made for young people before they commit their first crime. This conclusion is not supported by the standard approach to work with offenders, which prioritises work with the high-risk offenders. Although Paul Omerod’s conclusions may be correct according to the data he has collected, I believe there are two main reasons for focusing on high-risk offenders. The first is that a small number of high-risk offenders cause the most harm to the community. Work with them is more likely to reduce the effects of crime on the community. This raises the question as to how a complex adaptive system returns to a power law distribution after a significant perturbation. In other words, does reducing the number of high risk offenders merely create opportunities for other lower high risk offenders in the community to replace them. The main reason, however, is that there is no reliable method to determine which people who offend will actually go on to become high-risk offenders. The proportion who do is very small and the result of prioritising them would be a large input of resources into people who would never become high risk Ways of working with offenders and victims Cognitive Behaviour Theory is the generally accepted psychological theory which forms the framework for work with offenders (McGuire, 2000). It postulates that our behaviours are driven by our thoughts and feelings. Therefore, if we change our thoughts and feelings, we change our behaviours. Before a particular intervention is chosen three main factors are considered (Andrew & Bonta., 2003): 1. Risk. Interventions are primarily aimed at high-risk offender, so assessing the level of risk is crucial. 2. Needs. There must be an assessment of the criminogenic (crime producing) needs of the offender. Examples are violence propensity, alcohol and drugs, and offence related sexual arousal. 3. Responsivity. There is a need to assess the likelihood that the person can respond to an intervention. Barriers to responsivity include intellectual incapacity, alcohol or drug use, and poor motivation. 1 One to one interviewing Tipping points are sometimes evident in work with offenders. If agents are progressively withdrawn from a complex adaptive system, it continues to function surprisingly well for a long time because a multitude of alternative pathways can be utilised in order to continue functioning. However, a point is suddenly reached where there are not enough alternative pathways operating for the system to maintain itself and the degeneration is very rapid. This principle can explain why a seemingly small comment at a critical point in the life of an offender, can precipitate a major breakdown in the schema of a person. It is important that after the schema is broken down, it is reconstituted with a more effective schema or the old schema manages to reform or an even less effective schema at a lower optimum on the phase space predominates. 2 Programmes The Community Probation Service in New Zealand runs two cognitive-skills based small group programmes, the Criminogenic Programme and the Straight Thinking Programme. The dynamics of group work differs significantly from one-to-one work. While in both cases the schema of the participants is disrupted towards a far from equilibrium position, the more complex dynamics of groups allows opens more possibilities to encourage self-organisation of the schema. Participants will often challenge each other, which is generally more effective than from a facilitator. On the other hand, the risks of the emergence of destructive dynamics and catastrophes are greater. Negative ideas can very shift the entire group rather than just one individual. Agreed ground rules are very useful in maintaining the connectivity of the group. They help to ensure that the behaviour of the participants remains within the bounds of the attractor and do not move to a destructive location on the fitness landscape. Rules such as no violence or abusive language help to preserve the autonomy of participants, while rules such as honesty and listening foster connectivity. Restorative Justice The traditional retribution based justice system sees the offender and victim as protagonist and antagonist. A complexity perspective allows a more realistic view of the two as dynamically complementary elements capable of co-evolving to new emergent levels of interaction (Lucas & Milov, 1997). In the traditional court system, the victim has little part to play unless they are used as a witness in a trial. The state has largely taken over the role so the victim has no way of finding their resolution directly. Without being able to positively interact, both offender and victim are left in limbo, unable to bifurcate towards a point of emotional healing. The Restorative Justice model (Zehr,1990) brings together the offender, the victim and their support people to guide them through a process allowing the violation to be acknowledged and healed, and restoring the offender and victim back into their community. Tribal based justice systems, such as that of the New Zealand Maori exhibit many similarities to the Restorative Justice model (Consedine, 1999) Naturally, a restorative justice conference will not always be appropriate. Often either the offender or victim does not wish to participate, or safety issues may make proceeding unwise. Restorative Justice must remain alongside the traditional justice system. It has, however proven itself to be extremely effective and enabled significant healing between offender and victim, even in crimes such as a rape-murder (Szmania, 2004). Conclusion Complexity theory offers a different perspective on work with offenders, which acknowledges that the complex and unpredictability of the dynamics of working with offenders and victims. Working to positively enhance the autonomy and connectivity of the offender, the victim, and the community, can help heal the damage created by the crime. It can also better provide the offender with the tools necessary to bifurcate away from a maladaptive schema towards one which encourages caring and support for themselves, their family, and the wider community. References Andrews D.A. (2004), The Psychology of Criminal Conduct and Principles of Effective Prevention and Rehabilitation, Department of Psychology, Carleton University http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/pblct/forum/e07/e071j.shtml, Forum on Corrections Research January 1995, Volume 7, Number 1 pp 34-36 Andrews D and Bonta J (2003), The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, Anderson Publishing Co, Cincinnati, Ohio, 3rd edition Consedine J (1999), Restorative Justice, Healing the Effects of Crime, Ploughshares Publications, Lyttleton, New Zealand, Revised edition Lucas C. & Milov Y. (1997), Conflict as Emergent Phenomena of Complexity, Calresco group, http://www.calresco.org/group/conflict.htm King L (1999), The Role of Beliefs, Cognitive Processes and Products in Offending, Dept of Corrections Psychological Service Violence Prevention Unit McGuire, James (2000), Cognitive - Behavioural Approaches, An introduction to theory and research, University of Liverpool (edited by M Jane Furniss HMIP) Omerod, P, Mountfield C., and Smith L. (2001), Non-linear modelling of burglary and violent crime in the UK, Volterra Consulting Ltd Omerod P., Cook W., and Cooper E. (2003), Scaling behaviour in the number of criminal acts committed by individuals, Volterra consulting Ltd Pescitelli D. (1996), An Analysis of Carl Rogers’ Theory of Personality, http://www.wynja.com/personality/rogersff.html Prochaska, J.O. and DiClemente, C.C. (1994), The Transtheoretical Approach: Crossing Traditional Boundaries of Therapy. Malabar, Fl: Krieger Publishing Company Stacey R, (1996), Complexity and Creativity in Organisations, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco Stacey R, (1996), Complexity and Creativity in Organisations, Berret Koehler Publishers, San Francisco Szmania S.J. (2004), Narrative, Complexity Theory, and Rhetorical Possibility in Victim-Offender Mediation, University of Texas at Austin. Young J (2003), Early Maladaptive Schemas and Schema Domains, http://www.schematherapy.com/id73.htm Zehr H.(1990), Changing Lenses, A new Focus for Crime and Justice, Herald Press, Waterloo, Ontario |
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