Ireland, Investigation Of Whether Anger-Management Courses Work

Front 1

Aim

Back 1

To assess whether anger-management programmes work with a group of adult male offenders.

Front 2

Sample

Back 2

50 prisoners who had completed an anger-management course and a control group of 37 who hadn't completed one. They were matched on the following three criteria: their responses to a cognitive behavioural interview; the Wing Behavioural Checklist (WBC) which was completed by prison officers rating 29 angry behaviours with scores of 0, 1 or 2 for the week before the interview; a self-report questionnaire on anger-management (AMA) with 53 items completed by the prisoners themselves.

Front 3

Methodology

Back 3

A quasi-experiment taking advantage of the two naturally occurring groups. The measures above were given to the prisoners in the treatment group before and after they completed the programme; the control group also got them twice but without intervention in between.

Front 4

Results

Back 4

There was a significant reduction in prison wing-based aggression in the experimental group scored lower on the self-report measures after completing the course but there was no difference in the control group. Overall, 92% of the prisoners in the experimental group showed improvement on at least one measure and 8% showed deterioration on both measures upon completing the course.

Front 5

Conclusions

Back 5

In the short term these prisoners appeared to be helped by the programme, but in this case we have no re-conviction data further down the line. It is interesting that 8% actually got worse, which would require further investigation.