Changing Situational Decision Making Among Offenders: A Preliminary Analysis

Authors' Note: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, New York, February 2004.

An issue of significant and persistent interest to those who study crime has been researching the role of individual decision-making in the genesis

of deviant behavior. While research in mainstream criminology has causally linked criminality to such factors as broad social structures (Merton, 1968), cultural values (Shaw and McKay, 1969) and conventional aspects of socialization (Hirschi, 1969), more recent research has emphasized the intersection of social structure and individual action as the most fruitful domain for explaining this social phenomenon in theoretically meaningful terms (Elliot, Huizinga and Ageton, 1985). A key feature of such "integrated" approaches is the emphasis on the decisions made by individuals in social context, and how external factors and processes of socialization affect such decisions.

Significant research has been conducted on the effectiveness of institutional programs designed to prevent recidivism through changing the decision-making and behavior of offenders. Pearson et al. (2002) have noted that various meta-analyses have evaluated the success rates of such efforts. For example, Gottschalk et al. (1987) found 14 studies published from 1967 through 1983 in which successful and significant prevention of recidivism occurred as a result of a "cognitive" program component (i.e., a treatment modality involving problem-solving-negotiation skills training), as well as other forms of mediated behavior modification. Similar findings were produced by Andrews et al. (1990) in their analysis of the results of more than 80 studies of correctional programs involving a cognitive treatment component published between 1950 and 1989.

While encouraging, such results have been challenged by those who have found no significant recidivism benefit to programs emphasizing cognitive or behavioral modification approaches to treatment (Whitehead and Lab, 1989). Such results, combined with the shift to more conservative political and social policy ideologies in the United States during the latter part of the 20th century, had a significant effect on the nature of correctional discourse. As strong support for innovative, prison-based rehabilitation programs waned, emerging and revitalized paradigms reflected an emphasis on removing or hardening opportunities for crime, rather than changing the individual decisions that lead to it.

One area of research that has focused on such issues exclusively has come to be known as "rational choice" theory. Emanating from 18th century notions of free will and the desire of individuals to maximize "pleasure" and minimize "pain," rational choice proponents stress the interaction of situational opportunities for crime and the inclination of the individual to violate the law in such situations (Cornish and Clark, 1986; Clark and Cornish, 2001). More than just a passive occurrence, however, crime is seen as a conscious choice that is made by the criminally motivated person to accomplish the act in question. Selection of targets and steps to avoid detection are among the actions identified as indicators of an offender's active intent and are a reflection of the dynamics of criminal decision making (Clarke and Cornish, 2001). A central concept here is the "deliberation" involved in the choice to commit crime, with criminality viewed as actions "committed with the intention of benefiting the actor" (Clarke and Cornish, 2001).

IMAGE TABLE 1

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of Research Participants (n = 195)

Rational choice advocates find support for their assertions in the results of a number of criminological studies. For example, Piquero and Tibbets (1996) found that choices to engage in offensive conduct were the result of both situational factors and individual characteristics of low self-control, thus supporting the perspective of Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) who posited that the locus of criminality rests in an individual's inability to control criminal tendencies when presented with criminal opportunities. In a similar vein, Griffin and Armstrong (2003) studied the impact of significant life changes on behavioral choices, finding that such changes had the effect of removing necessary external social controls and increasing the short-term likelihood of criminality among those with preexisting criminal tendencies. These conclusions were consistent with those of Grasmick and Bursik (1990) who identified a significant relationship between internal and external controls as a major factor in producing conformity.

While these (and many other) studies have served to bolster the rational choice perspective, most of the "applied" research in this field has focused on environmental initiatives aimed at hardening crime targets, thus reducing the profit or "pleasure" potential considered by rational decision makers contemplating crime. Defined as situational crime prevention, such efforts have focused, not on changing the motivations of offenders, but rather on removing the targets on which they prey. By making crime more difficult and less profitable, it then becomes a less attractive behavioral choice (Clarke, 1992). What has not been addressed significantly within this perspective, however, is the extent to which programmatic efforts to redirect the situational decision making of individuals can successfully achieve a more conformist, thus "rational" outcome. It is to such an effort that this research is directed.

IMAGE TABLE 2

Table 2.

Program Participation Compared With Subsequent Offending

Table 3.

Program Completion Compared With Subsequent Offending

Changing Rational Choices

To determine if the choices an offender makes can be made more conformist programmatically, it is first necessary to clarify an important term being used in this analysis. "Rational" behavior, as the term has been used in this context, signifies action that conforms to the norms and laws in a given social context. The value laden nature of the term rational has been addressed by scholars who have criticized the narrow focus of this perspective, as well as its failure to consider the significance of behavioral variables in the explanation of the individual's choice to commit crime (Void, Bernard and Snipes, 1998). While such discourse is an important and ongoing debate in criminology, the focus here is on whether individual behavior can be made more conformist through an institution-based program.

The program under study is one that uses individualized counseling sessions designed to develop a framework of situational decision making that results in more conformist behavioral choices. Open to inmates in several county-level detention facilities in southeastern Pennsylvania, this voluntary program runs from seven to 10 weeks and involves regular meetings between inmates and counselors (who are trained volunteers themselves). Meetings are designed to guide inmates through several programmatic "steps" that seek to create an understanding of the alternatives that exist in any decision-making situation. Choosing the most positive (i.e., conformist) alternative in various life situations is the goal for all program participants who, following release, will face such tasks on a regular basis. In existence since the 1970s, the program has produced hundreds of "graduates," but has never undergone an empirical evaluation of its success or failure in preventing recidivism among its participants.

The study was conducted September to December 2003. The experimental group for this study comprised 138 Pennsylvania residents who were convicted of a criminal offense in 1998 and chose to participate in the program. A randomly selected group of 57 offenders who did not participate in the program served as the control subjects for the analysis. Since time constraints and a significant amount of incomplete file information limited the quality of the data, subject matching was not possible. Thus, the convenience samples employed here are the most representative of the populations in question under the circumstances (A complete description of the sample demographics can be found in Table 1).

Program Effectiveness Analysis

To determine the effectiveness of the program under study, it was first necessary to assess whether participation in the program has some positive effect on subsequent offending. Table 2 presents the results of a cross-tabulation of participation status and re-offending. Although these numbers suggest that a larger percentage of program participants did not go on to engage in subsequent offending than nonparticipants (i.e., 44.5 percent versus 40.4 percent), a chi square analysis did not indicate a significant relationship between the factors (x^sup 2^ = 0.286, p = 0.593). Thus, any level of success or failure cannot be assumed from these numbers alone.

An additional variable (completion of the program) was then studied to determine if a relationship exists between this measurement and reoffending (see Table 3). These data show that completion of the program produces a lower likelihood of reoffending than noncompletion among program participants, and unlike the first analysis, the differences observed here are statistically significant (x^sup 2^ = 5.88, p = 0.015) and produce a significant "strength of association" measurement (Cramer's V = -0.207, p = 0.015). Similar findings were produced when this analysis was conducted using the complete sample.

To better understand the contrast between these two findings, analyses of the relationships between program participation/completion, subsequent re-offending and the other demographic factors were included in the research. These analyses produced significant relationships among only certain factors, namely, likelihood of re-offending, program completion, participation in other prison programs and prior offense record. The unusual nature of the associations among these factors requires explanation.

First, prior offense record, a stable predictor in most studies of criminal recidivism, retained its significance in this analysis. As the data in Table 4 indicate, the more extensive an offender's prior record of convictions, the more likely he or she will re-offend (x^sup 2^ = 11.18, p = 0.004; Cramer's V = 0.240, p = 0.004). Similarly, those with less extensive records of prior offending were significantly more likely to have completed the program (see Table 5), but prior record was not significantly related to an offender's likelihood of having participated in other prison-based programs (x^sup 2^ = 0.037, p = 0.982).

IMAGE TABLE 3

Table 4.

Prior Offense Record Compared With Subsequent Offending

Table 5.

Prior Offense Record Compared With Program Completion

Table 6.

Program Completion Compared With Prior Program Completion

The relationship between re-offending and participation in other prison programs was a bit more difficult to discern. While prior program participation had no significant direct relationship with likelihood of reoffending (x^sup 2^ = 0.549, p = 0.459), the variable was significantly associated with likelihood of program completion (see Table 6).

A final analysis was conducted to discern the relationship among the variables found to be most significant, namely, rates of re-offending, completion of the program and participation in other prison-based programs (prior record could not be included in this analysis as there were no individuals who had completed the program but had not committed prior offenses). As the data reported in Table 7 indicate, participation in other prison programs did make an offender less likely to commit subsequent offenses once their involvement with the program under study was completed. However, no significant association was observed for those who had no involvement in prison programs prior to their involvement in the program under study.

IMAGE TABLE 4

Table 7.

Relationships Between Prior Program Participation, Program Completion and Re-Offending

Conclusion

The data on which this analysis is based indicate that the program being studied here does provide an important benefit to offenders in terms of lowering their rates of subsequent offending. That benefit, however, is reserved for certain offenders, particularly those who complete the program and have participated in other prison-based programs. As in most studies of recidivism, prior record is also a relevant factor here, making those with less-extensive offense histories more likely to complete the program and significantly less likely to re-offend.

Future research on the positive effects of this program and others like it is both warranted and necessary. The limited amount and nature of the data available for this analysis prevented a more sophisticated investigation of the program's impact. Thus, while these preliminary results are insightful, they raise as many questions as they answer. For example, are the positive results observed due to the singular effects of the program, the type of inmate it attracts, the effects of other programs or some combination of all three? Such questions will only be answered as more substantial and complete outcome data can be collected, analyzed and compared with a matching group of nonprograrn participants. While these efforts are progressing, they are both time-consuming and costly. The value of such work, however, rests in the fact that its results will not only yield significant insight into the effectiveness of this program, but also provide decision makers with a better understanding of how programs of this kind can produce positive (and possibly long-term) behavioral changes among offenders. In this era of limited research funding, the direction of available resources toward the study of cost-effective initiatives with meaningful potential is both a safe and wise course of action for criminal justice policy-makers.

REFERENCE

REFERENCES

Andrews, D.A., I. Zinger, R.D. Hoge, J. Bonta, P. Gendreau and F.T. Cullen. 1990. Does correctional treatment work? A clinically relevant and psychologically-informed meta-analysis. Criminology, 28(3):369-404.

Clarke, R.V. 1992. Situational crime prevention: Successful case studies. New York: Harrow & Heston.

Clarke, R.V. and D.B. Cornish. 2001. Rational choice. In Explaining criminals and crime: Essays in contemporary criminological theory, eds. R. Paternoster and R. Bachman, 23-42. Los Angeles: Roxbury.

Cornish. D.B. and R.V. Clarke. 1986. The reasoning criminal: Rational choice perspectives on offending. New York: Springer.

Elliot, D.S.. D. Huizinga and S.S. Ageton. 1985. Explaining delinquency and drug use. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Gottfredson, M.R. and T. Hirschi. 1990. A general theory of crime. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Gottschalk, R., W.S. Davidson. J.P. Mayer and L.K. Gensheimer. 1987. Behavioral approaches with juvenile offenders: A metaanalysis of long-term treatment efficacy. In Behavioral approaches to crime and delinquency: A handbook of application, research and concepts, eds. E.K. Morris and C.J. Braukman, 399-420. New York: Plenum.

Grasmick, H.G. and R.J. Bursik. 1990. Conscience, significant others and rational choice: Extending the deterrence model. Law and Society Review. 24(3):837-861.

Griffin, M.L. and G.S. Armstrong. 2003. The effect of local life circumstances on female probationers' offending. Justice Quarterly. 20(2):213-239.

Hirschi, T. 1969. Causes of delinquency. Berkeley. Calif.: University of California Press.

Merton, R.K. 1968. Social theory and social structure. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.

Pearson, F.S., D.S. Lipton. C.M. Cleland and D.S. Yee. 2002. The effects of behavioral/cognitive-behavioral programs on recidivism. Crime and Delinquency, 48(3):476-496.

Piquero, A. and S. Tibbets. 1996. Specifying the direct and indirect effects of low self-control and situational factors in offenders' decision making: Toward a more complete model of rational offending. Justice Quarterly. 13(3):481-508.

Shaw, C.R. and H.D. McKay. 1969. Juvenile delinquency and urban areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Void, G.B., T.J. Bernard and J.B. Snipes. 1998. Theoretical criminology, fourth edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Whitehead, J.T. and S.P. Lab. 1989. A meta-analysis of juvenile correctional treatment. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. 26(3):276-295.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Michael W. Markowitz, Ph.D., is acting dean of the Widener University College of Arts and Science in Chester, Pa. Christopher Salvatore is a doctoral student in criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia.