The attitudinal effects of group discussions between young criminal offenders and community volunteers

Abstract

The notion that positive effects might result from structured meetings between offenders and non-offenders has been active in corrections for some time. The idea was basic to the community-based recreational projects of the 1930s through to the present day. In one of the few experimental investigations, Shulman demonstrated that community-based activity groups composed of both prosocial and antisocial children yielded positive changes in the home and classroom behavior of the problem children. Comparable data were not collected on the behavior of the normal children. While the trend toward community involvement in corrections is very apparent today'^>, there have been no experimental investigations of the value such programs within institutions. The most obvious theoretical base for including community volunteers in group work with incarcerated offenders is differential association theory. Following Sutherland and Cressey', attitudes and beliefs favorable toward law breaking are learned through association with criminal patterns and isolation from anti-criminal patterns. It is now conventional wisdom that incarceration and hence forced association with criminal others may serve to maintain or even increase deviant attitudes, beliefs and values. There is some research support'^E.' 3) fgj. ĵ jg jj^^ j ^ jg ^^^^ clear that the effects of incarceration depend upon the institutional regime. A simple and direct deduction from differential association theory would be that a means of increasing association with non-criminal others during incarceration would serve to inhibit the fixation of criminal patterns or even facilitate the acquisition of anti-criminal patterns. However, as the Sutherland and Cressey*'' statement stands, one would also expect non-offenders to take on some criminal attitudes and beliefs. As the Burgess and Aker's'*' operant reformulation of differential association theory makes clear, the degree and direction of association effects are dependent not simply upon association but upon the conditions under which association occurs. The effects may be controlled by structuring the meetings with reference to the conditions which are most facilitative of desired outcome. One necessary condition is exposure to anti-criminal patterns and one function of community volunteers is to provide such alternative views on matters related to law violations. Further, the a,lternative views and behaviors exposed should be presented in a concrete manner, in explicit detail and the reinforcement contingencies associated with suggested behaviors should be outlined clearly. Such conditions represent the ones under which models, instructions and suggestions may exert attitudinal and behavioral control''''. This study investigated the feasibility of using community volunteers in counseling and was a demonstration project on the effects of short-term structured group counseling in prisons, (i' Weekly (4 to 8) meetings were held within an institution