The rehabilitation of indigenous prisoners : an Australian perspective

The massive problems experienced by Indigenous Australians in their encounters with the criminal justice system have been well documented and widely discussed. This paper applies the Risk, Needs and Responsivity Model of rehabilitation to Indigenous offenders. While much of the review is devoted to a discussion of Australian Indigenous offenders, the issues raised are likely to be relevant to Indigenous groups from other countries and, possibly, ethnic minority offenders more generally. We concluded that whilst the model clearly has value, rehabilitation programs would benefit from a careful consideration of issues relating specifically to the Risk, Needs and Responsivity of Indigenous offenders.

Current trends in the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders

The Australian Institute of Criminology's recent work on adult male offenders has found that the most serious and persistent adult offenders had been detained as a juvenile. In terms of crime reduction, interventions that focus on reducing the likelihood of juveniles escalating to adult offenders will have significant benefits for the whole of the Australian community. Research conducted in juvenile justice settings around the world consistently shows that young people who come to the attention of criminal justice agencies have multiple problems and experience high levels of need across all areas of functioning. In meeting these needs, correctional agencies have been increasingly influenced by the model of rehabilitation known as the 'what works' approach. This paper outlines a case management framework for rehabilitating juvenile offenders that includes three of the most important 'what works' principles, namely the risk principle, the needs principle and the responsivity principle. In the longer term, the implementation of the framework will need to be evaluated to determine what works and what doesn't with rehabilitating juveniles.

Coerced offender rehabilitation : a defensible practice?

The use of the criminal justice system to force offenders to receive psychological treatment is one of the most controversial aspects of service provision for offenders. Coerced treatment needs to be distinguished from pressured treatment, both having objective and subjective dimensions. In this paper some arguments for and against coerced offender rehabilitation are discussed. We suggest that coercing offenders into attending rehabilitation programmes (or placing legal pressure on them to attend) is unlikely by itself to lead to poorer outcomes. Rather, the individual's perception of coercion will be more influential in determining how an offender approaches treatment. Even when offenders perceive they are being coerced, it is likely that pre-treatment anti-therapeutic attitudes can change over the course of a programme, such that therapeutic gains (risk reduction) can occur. Coercion and its effects on treatment engagement and rehabilitation outcomes require further empirical research and conceptual analysis.

Fish assemblage response to rehabilitation of a sand-slugged lowland river

The impact of excessive sediment supply on river channels has been  described in many areas of the world. Sediment deposition disturbance alters habitat  structure by decreasing channel depth, changing substrate composition and burying woody debris. River rehabilitation is occurring worldwide, but information is scant on fish assemblage responses to rehabilitation in sedimentdisturbed lowland rivers. Sediment removal and large woody debris (LWD) replacement  were used to experimentally rehabilitate habitat along a 1500m stretch of the Glenelg River in western Victoria, Australia. Using an asymmetrical before-after control-impact (BACI) design, fish were captured before and after the reach was rehabilitated, from two control reaches and from a ‘higher quality’ reference reach. After two years post-rehabilitation monitoring, the fish assemblage at the rehabilitated reach did not differ from control reaches. Temporal changes in taxa richness and the abundance of Philypnodon grandiceps, Nannoperca spp. and three angling taxa occurred after rehabilitation (winter 2003) compared with the before period (winter 2002), but these effects did not differ between rehabilitated and control locations. Highest taxa richness and abundances occurred at the reference location. High salinity coincided with the timing of rehabilitation works, associated with low river discharges due to drought. The negative effects of other large-scale disturbances may have impaired the effectiveness of reachscale rehabilitation or the effects of rehabilitation may take longer than two years to develop in a lowland river subjected to multiple environmental disturbances.

Opting in and opting out: a grounded theory of nursings contribution to inpatient rehabilitation

Aim: To develop a grounded theory of nursing’s contribution to patient rehabilitation from the perspective of nurses working in inpatient rehabilitation.

Design: Grounded theory method, informed by the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism, was used to guide data collection and analysis, and the development of a grounded theory.

Setting: Five inpatient rehabilitation units in Australia.

Participants: Thirty-five registered and 18 enrolled nurses participated in audio-taped interviews and/or were observed during periods of their everyday practice.

Findings: The analysis revealed a situation whereby nurses made decisions about when to ‘opt in’ and when to ‘opt out’ of inpatient rehabilitation. This occurred on two levels: with their interaction with patients and allied health professionals, and when faced with negative system issues that impacted on their ability to contribute to patient rehabilitation. The primary contribution nurses made to inpatient rehabilitation was working directly with patients, enabling them to self-care. Nurses coached patients when their decisions about ‘opting in’ and ‘opting out’ were based on assessment of the person in their particular context. In contrast, the nurses mostly distanced themselves from system-based problems, ‘opting out’ of addressing them. They did this not to make their working lives easier, but more manageable.

Conclusion: System-based problems impacted negatively on the nurses’ ability to deliver comprehensive rehabilitation care. As a consequence, some nurses felt unable to influence the care and they withdrew professionally to make their work lives more manageable.

Grounded theory of nursing's contribution to inpatient rehabilitation

There is growing awareness of the benefits of rehabilitation both in Australia and overseas. While the provision of rehabilitation services is not new, recognition of this type of health service as an integral part of health care has been linked to changes in the provision of acute care services, advances in medical technology, improvements in the management of trauma and an ageing population. Despite this, little attention has been paid to nursing's contribution to patient rehabilitation in Australia. The aim of this grounded theory study, therefore, was to collect and analyse nurses' reports of their contributions to patient rehabilitation and to describe and analyse contextual factors influencing that contribution. Data were collected during interviews with registered and enrolled nurses working in five inpatient rehabilitation units in New South Wales and during observation of the nurses' everyday practice. A total of 53 nurses participated in the study, 35 registered nurses and 18 enrolled nurses. Grounded theory, informed by the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism, was used to guide data analysis, the ongoing collection of data and the generation of a substantive theory. The findings revealed six major categories. One was an everyday problem labelled incongruence between nurses' and patients' understandings and expectations of rehabilitation. Another category, labelled coaching patients to self-care, described how nurses independently negotiated the everyday problem of incongruence. The remaining four categories captured conditions in the inpatient context which influenced how nurses could contribute to patient rehabilitation. Two categories, labelled segregation: divided and dividing work practices between nursing and allied health and role ambiguity, were powerful in shaping nursing's contribution as they acted individually and synergistically to constrain nursing's contribution to patient rehabilitation. The other two categories, labelled distancing to manage systemic constraints and grasping the nettle to realise nursing's potential, represent the mutually exclusive strategies nurses used in response to segregation and role ambiguity. From exploration of the relationship between the six categories, the core category and an interactive grounded theory called opting in and opting out emerged. In turn, this grounded theory reveals nursing's contribution to inpatient rehabilitation as well as contextual conditions constraining that contribution. The significance of these findings is made manifest through their contribution to the advancement of nursing knowledge and through implications for nursing practice and education, rehabilitation service delivery and research.

Financial and non-financial determinants of delisting and emergence from rehabilitation

The objective of this thesis was to derive two models: the first, to predict which companies on the Stock Exchange of Thailand would join the Companies Under Rehabilitation (REHABCO) sector; and the second to predict which companies in the REHABCO sector would go on to be delisted from there.

Offender rehabilitation as a value-laden process

This article investigates some of the primary assumptions and values that underpin correctional practice in the area of offender rehabilitation. It is suggested that values are reflected in offenders’ and clinicians’ fundamental beliefs about the rehabilitative process and as such underlie their various actions. This article identifies three areas in which values may be important (organisational values about crime and punishment, professional values, and personal values) and discusses each in relation to its relevance for rehabilitative practice. It is concluded that despite the apparent role of values in the correctional domain, very little is known about the values of those who deliver rehabilitative programs and how these might influence rehabilitative outcomes.

Transitions to better lives : offender readiness and rehabilitation

The aim of this book is to describe, collate, and summarise a body of recent research, both theoretical and empirical, that explores the issue of treatment readiness in offender programming. The book is divided into three different sections.

The first section unpacks a model of treatment readiness and how it has been operationalised; the second section discusses how the construct has been applied to the treatment of different offender groups; and in the final section, some of the practice approaches that have been identified as holding promise in addressing low levels of offender readiness are discussed.

Violent offender rehabilitation and the therapeutic community model of treatment : towards integrated service provision?

Rehabilitation programs for violent offenders are at an early stage in their development, and there is currently only a very limited empirical base from which to draw any conclusions about treatment effectiveness (Jolliffe and Farrington, 2007). Therapeutic communities for offender populations have a much longer history, although the effects of applying this model of treatment to violent offenders have not been systematically investigated. This paper reviews the content and evidence supporting both violent offender treatment programs and therapeutic community models, concluding that approaches to treatment which combine features of both may prove to be most successful, and warrant further development and evaluation.