DELINQUENCY, RECIDIVISM AND DESISTANCE

The techniques of behaviour modification have proved highly effective in tackling various problems in the field of education, from classroom manage ment to the development of learning programmes. They have been success fully applied, also, to the improvement of ward regimes and patient care in psychiatric hospitals and to the training of subnormal people. By contrast, the results of attempts to make use of these methods in the treatment of offenders have been disappointing. It seems unlikely that criminal behaviour is inherently unresponsive to the techniques of behaviour modification; the alternative explanation is that these techniques must have been applied in the wrong way. In order to see whether this is so, we shall need to review what is known about delinquency and the circumstances in which it persists or ceases; armed with these insights, we may proceed to consider how the methods of behaviour modification might best be brought to bear in the attempt to deflect offenders from further crime.