Reducing Antisocial Behaviour

Through Prosocial Role-Taking

Engaging children in prosocial behaviors is a technique that has long been known to be
effective in promoting their prosocial tendencies (e.g. Barton, 1981; Staub, 1979; White, 1972).
Children who are assigned responsibility to teach others or who are encouraged to participate in
prosocial activities subsequently display more prosocial behavior. Assigning children
responsibility for others enhances their prosocial behavior (Maruyama, Fraser, & Miller, 1982;
Peterson, 1983). In fact, cross-cultural research has found that children from cultures in which
youngsters are routinely assigned responsibilities for assisting others are more prosocial than
children from other cultures (Whiting & Whiting, 1975).

There are also many examples of the success of programs that have engaged older
individuals such as antisocial adolescents and adult offenders in prosocial activities in which
they play the role of helpers for others. In this article we present a rationale for recommending
such interventions in programs designed to lead offenders to adopt a prosocial life-style.

Helper Therapy

Some explanations are similar to those that were suggested to account for the success
of a "Peer Therapist" program in the 1960's that reduced the recidivism of insitutionalized
adolescent offenders in Canada by training them in social cognitive skills that they applied in
helping reduce the antisocial behaviour of their peers (Ross & McKay.1979). Their recidism was
from 58% to 6% for a matched comparison group. The program was referred to as "Helper
Therapy", a term used by Riessman (1965) for his observation that you get more out of therapy
if you are the therapist than if you are the patient. Riessman was not referring to money.
Therapy for many therapists may help their financial well-being more than it helps the financial
well-being of the patients who must pay their fees. Riessman was referring to something non-
pecuniary: the good feeling that comes from helping people. The "therapist" helpers in the "Peer
Therapy" program were reinforced for their prosocial activity not by monetary or other tangible
rewards but by social rewards in the form of acceptance by their adolescent peers. However,
their frequently voiced comments indicated that they were more strongly reinforced by the fact
that their activities made them feel worthwhile. Helping others may not be selfless because
helping others leads to a more favorable mental state for the helper.

Altruism was probably first created when our primitive ancestors realized that
cooperation increased the odds of survival in a danger-filled environment. However, in modern
times there are other rewards. For example. antisocial individuals who engage in such prosocial
role-taking may be rewarded by their newly acquired feelings of prosocial competence. They
feel empowered and they may develop a sense of self-efficacy. They experience a sense of
acceptance and belonging in a prosocial culture and come to view themselves as prosocial.

You Become The Role You Play

There is another important benefit that can be obtained by helping others. Research in
social psychology indicates that individuals tend to attribute to themselves characteristics of the
roles they play. Bem (1967) argued that if we can subtly get people to behave in ways in which
they do not normally behave, they will come to attribute to themselves the characteristics of
people who usually behave in these ways. Individuals who engage in prosocial acts learn to
think of themselves as prosocial, caring people (Perry & Perry, 1983). They develop a 'prosocial
identity'.

Antisocial individuals who are led to engage in prosocial roles as helpers for others may
come to see themselves in a very different light - they may come to see themselves as prosocial
rather than anti-social. They begin to attribute to themselves positive, prosocial characteristics
which were previously foreign to them. They also come to appreciate the value of prosocial
behavior, to recognize the awards it can bring them, and to acquire social skills which can serve
as alternatives to their antisocial behavior. They learn that prosocial behavior “feels good”.

The Story Of Our Life

How individuals behave is strongly influenced by their “scripts” (or their “self-narrative”
that they develop through their social experience that tells them who they are and why they are
that way (Huesmann & Eron,1989; Maruna, 1999). They come to behave in ways that fit their
narratives. Studies of the process of "desistance" demonstrates that offenders who "go straight"
make pro-social sense of their lives. The research indicates that “In order to desist from crime…
ex-offenders need to develop a coherent, prosocial identity for themselves” (Maruna, 2000).
Providing service to others is one way individuals can change their antisocial self-narrative. One
of the earliest examples of this phenomenon was the "Peer Therapy" program.

Becoming Good By Doing Good

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as
if you had it already C.S. Lewis

The institutionalized antisocial adolescents who acted as “therapists” for their delinquent
peers came to view themselves as prosocial problem-solvers rather than the antisocial,
problem-ridden individuals they thought they were (and indeed were) before their involvement in
the program. They were treated as cohorts rather than patients; as research assistants in a
long-term research project.

It is important to note that the adolescents' participation was voluntary. They were never
given any material rewards for acting as helpers. They needed to explain to themselves why
they were acting in such an unaccustomed, prosocial manner. They asked themselves, "How
can I explain to myself why I am engaging in helping others?" Their answer was "it is because
that is the way I am".

Antisocial individuals who are led to engage in prosocial role-taking may justify their
reasons for doing so by attributing to themselves characteristics of people who normally behave
that way. "I must be prosocial if I behave prosocially". Engaging in prosocial activities leads
them to change their antisocial self-identity to that of a prosocial one.

The adolescents' previous antisocial behavior had been underpinned by an "antisocial"

self-narrative that they had developed as a way of making sense of the way they usually
behaved – the way that they believed was the best way, or the only way to deal with their
problems. It became over time their “story” about how they must behave in order to cope with
their environment. Their new experiences helped them to create a different “story” as they
began to develop a prosocial narrative and self-identity (cf. McAdams, 1993; Maruna, 1999;
Sampson & Laub, 1993; Ward & Maruna, 2007).
 We act 'as if' we are all the things we want to become.
We act as if' we're decent and caring and bright and talented. And
we eventually become these things.
Mimi Silbert

Is It Better To Give Than To Receive?

It is important to realize that the adolescents' improvement was not engendered by their
receiving help from their peers. It was engendered by their giving help. The improvement in the
behavior of the adolescents did not occur until they actually had been assigned peer "patients"
and had begun helping these other adolescents. It was by acting prosocially that they became
prosocial. Perhaps it really is better to give than to receive.

Reciprocal Altruism

However, it is also important to note that they became therapists only after they had
received help from their peers. However, it was more than just direct reciprocity ("if you help me,
I'll help you") since the individuals they helped when they became therapists were new residents
- not the individuals who had previously helped them.

Helper or Helpee?

Perhaps adolescents who have experienced very little acceptance and support and
considerable rejection and maltreatment in the past can become prosocial by being helped by
caring peers. Unfortunately, this did not appear to be the case in this instance – the adolescents
who received the help of their peers but left the institution before they became "therapists" for
others did not make much improvement in their behavior while in the institution or fare as well
after release. It appears that receiving help was not as helpful as giving help.

That conclusion is reinforced by evidence that among adolescent students engaged in

peer tutoring programs and peer counselling programs in schools, those who serve as tutors
and counsellors make gains in knowledge and attitudes to school; but there is little evidence of
any benefit to the tutored students (Resnick & Gibbs, 1988). However, it may be that being
helped by their peers may be an effective way to motivate antisocial adolescents to
subsequently engage in helping others.

The Power of Positive Acting

Hans Toch (2000) has argued that many "altruistic" programs such as those that involve
offenders in assisting underprivileged persons including the elderly, children, and the disabled
not only assist the recipients of the services but also yield the offenders "a sense of
accomplishment, grounded increments in self-esteem, meaningful purposiveness, and obvious
restorative implications". He notes that such activities accord well with the principles of
restorative justice. They also enable them to find a sense of community and belonging and
encourage social integration rather than social exclusion (Midlarsky, 1991).

Perhaps we could learn a lesson from the substantial benefits that accrued for the
institutionalized mentally ill in the 1820s when "moral treatment" was introduced to help free
these "patients" from their shackles and other forms of extreme control and maltreatment. Moral
treatment was based on the belief that they should be treated with kindness. However, it was
more firmly based on the principle that they could spend their time helping others (Clouette &
Deslandes, 1997). Would that this relatively unknown principle could have been operationalized,
(or at least included) in the rationalization behind the deinstitutionalization movement that 'freed'
large numbers of psychiatric patients in the modern era.

If you want to look in a crowd and find the person who is going to help
someone else, look at someone who has been damaged.
Michael Levy (The lives of Heroes)

More Than Just "Feel Good Programs"

Helping others enables people to feel good not only about themselves but also about
other people (Post, Underwood, Schloss & Hurlbut, 2002). Experiencing positive emotions such
as kindness from helping activities can displace the helper's harmful negative emotional states
such as rage, hatred, fear, depression, anxiety, anger and hostility which can trigger antisocial
behavior (Post, 2005).

The "Good Lives" Model

Some practitioners have begun to consider the use of positive psychology in offender
treatment. Positive psychology emphasises the facilitation of optimal mental and physical health
rather than combating dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Seligman et al., 2004;
Snyder & Lopez, 2001). The goal of positive psychology is to enable people to live flourishing
lives with greater health, well-being, and meaning. By focusing on the strengths of happy
people, positive psychology has identified factors that facilitate a more satisfying life. The factors
include work, helping others, being a good citizen, developing spirituality and integrity, realizing
potential, and self-regulating impulses (Seligman, 2004).

Positive Psychology is the foundation of the "Good Lives" model of offender treatment
which represents a paradigm shift from deficit-based to strength-based programming (Ward &
Stewart, 2003). Rather than focusing on reducing criminogenic needs or risk factors, the model
suggests that programs stress teaching skills and values and providing opportunities and social
supports to enable offenders to improve their functioning and obtain a better quality of life. Such
strength-based programs treat offenders as "community assets" and seek to provide
opportunities for them to develop prosocial identities and engage in work that is helpful to others
(Burnett & Maruna, 2006). Research on desistance from a criminal life-style has found that the
most successful desisters changed their self-identity from that of an offender to that of a
person who cares about others (Maruna, 2000).

Such an approach is far from new. The basic principles were presented in the 1960's
and 1970's under the ‘New Careers Movement’ in which, for example, poverty- stricken citizens
were engaged in constructive social programs to relieve the hardships of their peers (Pearl and
Riessman, 1965). Pearl (an unsuccessful U.S. Presidential candidate) suggested that "the best
people to solve a social problem are the products of that social problem". Interestingly, he
suggested training such individuals in the R&R program in order to equip them with skills they
could apply in order to bring about positive social change (Pearl, 1989).

A Rose by Any Other Name

If you can't say something nice,

don't say nothing at all.
 Thumper (in the movie "Bambi")

An important component in the "Peer Therapist" program in the 1960's was what was
termed "normalizing" or "depathologizing". The program staff were asked to avoid talking about
their clients' behavior in pathological terms or in terms of personal deficits. Instead they focused
almost exclusively on their competence, prosocial skills, personal strengths and hope – no
matter how limited they might be. This approach is an early example that operationalized the
fundamental premise of "solution-focused therapy" (McConkey, 1998)

I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins,

because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will, but I
know I can be a lady to you because you always treat me as a lady,
and always will.
Eliza Doolittle

A NEUROSCIENCE VIEW
Neuroscience evidence that indicates that experiences in life become recorded and
hard-wired in our brains in neural connections suggests that engaging in prosocial experiences
may foster the development of prosocial connections in our brains that can lead us to engage in
further prosocial activity. Neural connections formed by exposure to criminogenic and/or
pathogenic environments can engender an antisocial life story. New prosocial experiences can
yield new prosocial connections and foster the development of a new prosocial life story.

Simply thinking about someone else's problems lights up the same part of the brain that
gets activated when we reflect on our own problems. The compassion we feel registers in our
brain's pleasure zones. Neuroscientists, Jorge Moll and his colleagues at the National Institutes
of Health (2005) have now found persuasive evidence that altruistic acts activate pleasure
centers in the brain that usually are activated in response to sex or food.

Helping, Health and Mental Health

Helping others can help these others but helping others may help the helpers even
more. It may have significant physical and mental health benefits. The health benefits of helping
others have been touted by innumerable cliches such as "Good deeds are good medicine".
There now is strong evidence that there is considerable substance to such cliches. For
example, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been found to be reduced among
veterans after caring for their grandchildren (Hierholzer, 2004). Helping can also neutralize
negative emotional states which cause stress and stress-related illness (e.g. Fredrickson, 2003;
Sternberg, 2001).

Research in bioneurology has also established that our physiology can be changed by
helping others (e.g. Post, 2007; Schloss, 2005). For example, examination of the saliva of
students watching a videotape of Mother Theresa found evidence of elevation in their immunity-
boosting chemicals (McClelland, McClelland, & Kirchnit, 1988). In fact, helping others can lower
stress hormones (Field, Hernandez-Reif, Quintino, Schanberg & Kuhn, 1998).

Recent studies have confirmed an association between helping activities and both
emotional well-being and life satisfaction (e.g. Dulin & Hill, 2003; Liang, Krause, & Bennett,
2001; Krueger, Hicks & McGue, 2001; Morrow-Howell, Hinterlonh, Rozario, & Tang, 2003).
Actively engaging in helping others can also reduce feelings of depression (Musick & Wilson,
2003). Helpers can gain the good feeling of vicariously sharing the joy of the person they help
(Smith, Keating, and Stotland, 1989).

Just thinking about helping can have positive physiological effects. For example,
students who watched the film about Mother Theresa working with poor and sick individuals
strengthened the immune system of the observers but not that of students who watched a
neutral film (Edwards & Cooper, 1988).

Helping others can even substantially increase the helper's longevity. Research reviews
indicate that individuals who help others may reduce their own chances of dying (Post, 2005).
For example, a five year study of elderly couples found that those who provided emotional
support to spouses, friends and relatives were half as likely to die over the five-year period.
Another study found that among AIDS patients those who reported high levels of altruism,
including helping other AIDS victims, lived longer. “Altruistic persons live longer than egoistic
individuals” (Sorokin 2002).

Helpers Get High

Such research supports the view that it is not what we receive from relationships that is
most beneficial; it is what we give. There appears to be a "helper's high," similar to the
endorphin rush that runners often experience. The "helper's high" can produce immune-
enhancing biological changes.

However, the prosocial role-taking activities that Ross & Hilborn's (2008)
neurocriminology model proposes are not just more "self-help programs". They are "other help
programs".

Nobody should be only a receiver. If people are going to feel good and
be accomplished and be part of something, they have to be doing
something they can be proud of. ... So if we want them to be pro-
society, then we ought to set-up the vehicles that help them to be
somebody in more traditionally socially positive ways.
Mimi Silbert, Delancey
Street.

It Can Be Done and It Has Been Done

There is a remarkable and growing number of examples that demonstrate that "helping
others" programs can be implemented even with antisocial individuals:

• Adolescent Psychiatric Patients: Ross & McKay's (1979) "Peer Therapy"

program not only reduced recidivism, it also eliminated self-mutilation among the
adolescents in the institution who were acting as "therapists". Crabtree and
Grossman (1974) also achieved a major decrease in self-mutilatory behavior
using a very similar intervention - they persuaded the adolescents in an
adolescent psychiatric ward to help other high-risk patients.

• The Equip program: A major reduction in recidivism among male delinquents

was achieved in the United States in two residential settings for antisocial
 adolescents with a history of aggressive, disruptive and antisocial behavior
through a program that included a remarkably similar approach to the "Peer
Therapist" program of the 1960's. In the U.S. program, juvenile offenders were
taught values and social skills which they used as helpers for their peers. In a 12-
month post-release follow-up, recidivism for these adolescents was only 15%
compared to recidivism of 40.5% for the control group (Gibbs, 1996).

• Wharton Tract Narcotics Treatment Program: The success of a multifacetted

program for young offenders with lengthy histories of criminal behavior and of
heroin use has usually been attributed to the problem-solving component of the
program. However, it combined training in problem solving with a form of group
activities in which the offenders acted as "agents of change for others". At the end
of a two-year follow-up period, participants had a significantly lower rearrest rate
(49% vs. 66%) than a comparison group. Moreover, those reconvicted had a
lower rate of re-commitment to institutions, implying that their reoffences were of a
less serious nature (Platt et al.,1980).

• Uvic: Arguably, the most effective programs ever conducted in a prison was a
program that provided post secondary courses in the humanites to adult
prisoners with little education and long criminal histories (Duguid, 2000). As a key
part of this program, prisoners acted as "teaching assistants" to their prisoner
peers. The prisoners entered the program as students but later became tutors for
their fellow inmates. The program re-labelled the prisoners as students and
subsequently as educators rather than criminals. The prisoners could not
attribute their prosocial behavior to some external rewards such as a favourable
parole release decision. They came to view themselves as teachers who valued
helping others learn. They became committed to prosocial behavior by
advocating it to others – their prisoner/student peers. Although there were
unavoidable shortcomings in the evaluation, the four year outcome in terms of
reduction in recidivism was remarkable: "more than three times as many of a
matched group of non participants...were reincarcerated (52%) as of the Uvic
participants (14%) (Ross, 1980). Nowhere else in the criminological literature can
one find such impressive results with recidivistic adult offenders.

• Offenders as Researchers: Hans Toch (1997) has reported that reduced

violence can accrue among violent individuals in prison by engaging them as
research assistants engaged in the study of violence by their peers.

• Delinquents Studying Delinquency: Bryan McKay (1979) who trained the

institutionalized adolescents in the "Peer Therapist" program, has pointed to the
benefits in terms of reduced delinquency that were obtained by his having
delinquents on probation act as research assistants in the study of delinquency.

• Therapeutic Community: A classic example of engaging offenders in helping

roles is the many therapeutic communities (TC's) that have been implemented in
prisons, secure hospitals, and institutional and community settings for drug
 abusers (e.g. De Leon, 2000; Cullen, 1997). Meta-analyses indicate that TC's
have reduced recidivism for incarcerated substance-abuse offenders (Aos et
al.,2006,b; Lipton et al.,2002). Outcome studies of prison-based TC programs
with community after-care have reduced both recidivism and drug use (Knight,
Simpson, & Hiller, 1999; Martin, Butzin, Saum, & Inciardi, 1999; Wexler, Melnick,
Lowe, & Peters, 1999). There are also a few controlled studies that have
reported positive outcomes for TC's in drug treatment settings (e.g. Falkin,
Wexler, & Lipton, 1992). Athough they involved only small samples of
participants, two rigorous studies have indicated the value of Therapeutic
Community programs for mentally-ill offenders. (Sacks, Sacks, McKendrick,
Banks & Stommel, 2004; Van Stelle & Moberg, 2004).

However, metanalyses also highlight the many problems involved in evaluating

TC's (Lees, Manning & Rawlings, 2004). For example, since TC's are designed
to involve the whole "community" of patients (and staff…) it is difficult to obtain an
untreated sample. Moreover, among the many in-prison TC's, attempts are made
to introduce multiple changes in the organization, management and culture of the
prison. It is difficult to determine the relative contribution of such contextual
factors to outcome. Many provide a wide range of programs services and it is
difficult to determine the relative contribution to outcome of any one of them. For
example, the TC program in Grendon prison in the U.K. has yielded decreases in
recidivism (Cullen, 1997; Marshall, 1997; Wilson & McCabe, 2002). However, this
institution also provides a form of Psychodrama which, as we will argue later,
may contribute significantly to the outcome.

Although in Therapeutic communities the participants are expected to function as

helpers for their peers, there is seldom any training provided for these helpers
that could equip them with skills or values to effectively play such helping roles.
Perhaps that is why the average reduction in recidivism of in-prison T.C.
programs has only been found to be between 5.3% and 6.9% (Aos, Miller &
Drake, 2006).

• TwelveSteps: The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) involves

recovering alcoholics in helping in the recovery of other alcoholics and doing so
without any tangible reward. The AA literature suggests that “he discovers that by
the divine paradox of this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether his
brother has yet received anything or not” (AA Big Blue Book, 1952). There is
mounting evidence from controlled evaluations and no shortage of anecdotal
evidence and personal testimony that attests to the benefits for the ‘helper addict’
in terms of their own recovery.

Although seldom explained as helper therapy, this principle is operative in a

variety of "self-help" groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers
in which participants become advocates of alcohol avoidance or improved eating
 habits1. There is persuasive though only anecdotal evidence that smoking
cessation programs and weight reduction programs work best when participants
become "evangelists" against obesity or smoking.

• Delancey Street: The well known Delancey Street program is an example of

programs that engage offenders or substance-abusing residents in helping
others in the community. Delancey residents work with senior citizens, juveniles
from poor areas and people who are disabled, and they contribute to the
community in myriad ways, including running a food-distribution service for 60
charitable organizations in the San Francisco area. The program takes the
position that "This is about people helping each other. It's not enough in life to take
care of yourself ...Life isn't just about you".

• Offenders as Caretakers: Many institutions have implemented programs in

which inmates ‘work’ as volunteers in helping developmentally delayed children,
handicapped, long-tem institutionalized schizophrenic patients or other
individuals who have more problems that they have themselves. These programs
demonstrate one way whereby individuals can change their own antisocial self-
narrative. Careful screening is obviously required for such helping assignments
as is careful supervision.

• Prison Listeners: There are currently more than 1,500 prisoners in 153 prisons
in the UK and the Republic of Ireland who have been Samaritan trained as
"Listeners" who offer 24-hour support to fellow prisoners in distress.

• Pet Therapists: A growing number of institutions engage offenders in caring for

and training stray or abandoned pets that would otherwise be “put to sleep”.
However, it is not only the pets that benefit. Animals have been shown to
significantly reduce the prisoners' feelings of isolation and frustration
(Moneymaker & Strimple, 1991). Caring for pets yields prisoners a sense of
importance and of being needed. Most dogs give unconditional, non-judgmental
love and acceptance and offer spontaneous affection and undying loyalty
(Cusack, 1988). The offenders learn that caring is something they can do without
fear of rejection, and they learn that caring feels good.

There are many prison pet programs in such countries as Canada, United States,
England, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa. The pets include not only dogs
but cats, birds, mice, guinea pigs, birds, fish, horses, farm animals, and exotic
animals.

The sanitized Hollywood movie depiction of the Birdman of Alcatraz depicted how
his violent behavior was curbed when he began caring for birds. There are many
1
A group program designed to teach these 'helpers' skills that they can use to teach their substance
abusing or overweight 'clients' social cognitive and behavioural skills that can lead them to think and
behave in ways that are antagonistic to their maladaptive drinking or eating behaviour will be published
following field trails in Canada and Estonia (Ross, Hilborn & Izzo, 2009).
 other anecdotal reports of the benefits of such programs. For example, the Bird
Hand-Rearing Project in Pollsmoor Prison, one of the most notorious correctional
facilities in South Africa that houses hardened criminals and dangerous gangs
involves prisoners serving long sentences (usually for violent and serious crimes)
who hand-raise exotic birds. Caring for another creature has led the offenders to
become more caring themselves.

There have been a few controlled, empirically based studies of "Pet Projects2.
For example, a study conducted in a forensic hospital in Ohio compared two
wards, identical except that one had pets and one did not. It was found that the
medication level doubled in the ward without pets, as did the incidence of
violence and suicide attempts (Lee, 1983).

The "Pawsitive Directions Canine Program" at the Nova Institution for Women in
Canada teaches the women a non-punitive dog obedience training method
(operant conditioning) which they then apply in training unwanted rescue dogs
which are subsequently returned to the community as family pets or assistance
dogs for disabled persons. A comprehensive evaluation indicated that the canine
program not only provides the dogs with loving carers, but also improves the
offenders' self-esteem; self-discipline; patience and empathy. Moreover, it
produces positive changes in the institutional environment and contributes
positively to other institutional programs. The program is closely linked with the
R&R program and thus enables the women to apply, and obtain reinforcement for
using key cognitive skills taught in the R&R program such as problem solving,
alternative thinking, responding to the feelings of others, verbal communication,
and consequential thinking in their work with the dogs (Richardson-Taylor &
Blanchette, 2001). Hopefully, research will eventually find evidence that the
offenders' animal caring activity generalizes to their interactions with humans
after release.

Community Service

Many restorative justice and court-ordered community service programs engage

antisocial individuals in prosocial role-taking activities. However, the potential benefit to
the offenders in such programs may be compromised if the activities they are assigned
are demeaning. For example, cutting grass as part of a chain gang on a golf course in
Florida might help golfers find their errant golf balls but it is unlikely to have much
rehabilitative impact on the offenders.

If the programs are presented only as punishment, participants are likely to

attribute their prosocial role-taking not to their prosocial motivation but to a court order.
Moreover, if while performing their prosocial activities they are stigmatized as "criminals"
by their black and white striped prison uniform or other status degrading labelling, they

2
For a review see Lai, J. (1998). Literature Review: Pet Facilitated Therapy in Correctional Institutions.
Ottawa, ON: Correctional Service Canada.
are highly unlikely to come to view themselves as prosocial. However, many community
service order workers relate to offenders in a manner that is fully in accord with the
empathic understanding, genuineness, positive regard and respect, warmth, and
concreteness of expression that are essential in producing constructive client change.
Prosocial role-taking can occur in many supervised assignments that involve worthwhile
service that clearly benefits victims or other people in the community. The social service
and not only the sanction should be what is stressed.

IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION

It is important to note that it is rare for programs that engage prisoners, patients
or other clients in helping roles to equip the helpers with the requisite skills to effectively
perform such roles. Engaging antisocial individuals in helping activities with others is
unlikely to be helpful either for their 'clients' or themselves if they do not have the
social/cognitive/emotional skills and values that are required for prosocial competence.
Training them in such skills should precede their engagement in prosocial role-taking
(cf. Gibbs, Potter, Barriga & Liau, 1996). The R&R2 program that Ross & Hilborn and
their colleagues have developed provide an empirically-based, highly structured, and
manualized program that provides such training (Ross & Hilborn, 2008).

Part of the rationale for the prosocial role-taking activities we recommend is that
programs for offenders often have disappointing results because, with the best of
intentions, they emphasize their problems rather than their strengths. When a program
places individuals in the "offender role" or the "victim role" they often come to believe
that characteristics associated with those roles are enduring characteristics of
themselves and behave in accordance with their perception. Thus, when we treat
offenders as victims rather than victimizers we may lead them to view themselves as
helpless and powerless. Treating offenders as victims can also unintentionally feed their
egocentricity. A primary goal of the "other-help" R&R2 programs is to combat
egocentricity. They seeks to help offenders to decrease their self-centredness and
increase their concern for others.

Focusing on their shortcomings or their victimization may inadvertently reinforce

their attempts to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. This does not mean that
their behavior cannot be attributed to environmental, cultural and economic factors.
Such factors must be recognized and acknowledged both by the offender and the
Trainer. In fact, by acquiring prosocial thinking and emotional skills, the offenders may
be better able to identify and understand how these past and current factors have
influenced them in their choice of an antisocial life-style. However, the R&R2 programs
aim to help offenders realize that they are not destined to remain victims of their
background circumstances but can become self-determined individuals who are
personally responsible for what happens to themselves and have an obligation to help
others.
Excerpted from "Rehabilitating Rehabilitation: Neurocriminology for Treatment of
Antisocial behaviour" (Ross & Hilborn, 2008. Ottawa: Cognitive Centre of Canada.
www.cognitivecentre.ca).