A complexity perspective on work with offenders and victims of crime'

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• A complexity perspective on work with offenders
  and victims of crime.
• Victor MacGill

Systems Thinking and Complexity Science Insights
for Action 11th Annual ANZSYS Conference/Managing
the Complex V Christchurch, New Zealand, 5-7
December 2005
With permission of the Community Probation Service
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• I have worked as a Probation Officer for four
  years and have had an interest in complexity for
  around eight years.
• I am also involved in Restorative Justice
  conferences. This paper discusses the Cognitive
  Behavioural techniques used by the NZ Community
  Probation Service and Restorative Justice from a
  Complexity perspective.
• We start by developing a psychology to
  understand offending behaviour, which links
  Complexity Theory and Cognitive Behaviour
  techniques used by the Community Probation
  Service in New Zealand.

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Offending Behaviour

• Human Beings are examples of Complex Adaptive
  Systems (Capra 1997). Complex Adaptive Systems
  require strong and balanced autonomy and
  connectivity to function efficiently.
• If autonomy is weak, the agents lose their
  ability for innovation and novelty. If autonomy
  is too strong, the agents do not have enough in
  common to work together If connectivity is too
  low the system lapses into chaos. If connectivity
  is too high the system slows and cannot act
  effectively
• One tool we use to maintain our autonomy is
  privacy. We use it to block off vulnerable parts
  of ourselves from people who might violate our
  autonomy.

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• Offending is behaviour that violates the autonomy
  and/or connectivity of an individual or a group
  of people.
• In terms of the work of the Community Probation
  Service, however, a offender is someone who has
  plead guilty or been found guilty in a court of
  law and sentenced to a community based sentence,
  or is on Parole after having served time in
  prison.
• Given the fractal nature of human societies, a
  violation of a single person has an effect on the
  entire community in which the person lives.

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• Complex Adaptive Systems are maintained by flows
  of energy through them. For example, human beings
  maintain their physical body by a continual flow
  of food and water.
• Human Beings maintain their identity through a
  flow of experiences, which must then be
  interpreted to create a sense of meaning of
  ourselves and our world.

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• A schema is like a map we create inside ourselves
  of how we think the outside world is (Stacey,
  1994). We develop schemas to understand and
  create meaning and consistency from our flow of
  experiences. Schemas are dynamic and change over
  time. All experiences are compared to the schema
  and accepted or rejected. A schema therefore
  becomes an attractor of experiences, maintaining
  its own cohesion and a forming a stable sense of
  identity.
• We can create positive, effective schemas or
  negative schema that can involve offending
  behaviour.

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Anxiety Containment

• When we are unable to cope with our life
  experiences or the schema is challenged too much,
  we generate anxiety in ourselves.
• Ideally, we contain this anxiety in a positive
  way to live effectively

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• If we cannot cope, we often seek to end the
  anxiety rather than solve the underlying problem.
  We turn to maladaptive strategies like alcohol,
  drugs, gambling etc.. Such addictions are often
  linked to criminal behaviour.
• Shame and guilt keep most of us from offending
  behaviours, but for some the inhibiting effect of
  guilt or shame is not strong enough to deter them
  from crime.

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• To by pass inhibitive mechanisms that would take
  us away from offending cognitive distortions are
  used (King 1999).
• Denial
• Blame
• Minimisation
• Justification
• By thus reducing connectivity with the victim,
  the perception of the harm being done to them is
  reduced or blocked entirely, opening the way for
  offending behaviours

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Working with Offenders

• The role of a person working with offenders is to
  restore autonomy and connectivity as best as
  possible. This encourages a healing to allow
  those concerned to again play their role in the
  community and make the dynamics of
  self-organisation and emergence more likely to
  occur.

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The Cycle of Offending (adapted from Prochaska
and diClemente)
The worker must determine where the person is on
the cycle and adjust their intervention so as to
appropriately destabilise the schema of the
person towards a tipping point whereby a new more
effective schema can emerge.
Diagram used with permission of Carlo diClemente
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• One to One Work with Offenders
• Most work in the Community Probation Service is
  one-to-one work, assisting the offender to
  complete their sentence.
• One of the main tools used to work with offenders
  is motivational interviewing. The differences
  between their stated desires for their life and
  their actual behaviour are fed back to them. The
  aim is to destabilise their schema towards a
  tipping point, effecting a change in behaviour.

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Group Work

• Working in a group setting increases the
  complexity and requisite variety of interactions.
  Participants challenging each other is generally
  far more effective than a facilitator challenge.
  While opportunities for emergence are greater, so
  is the opportunity for catastrophe, where the
  whole group might regress.
• Group Ground Rules, create an attractor for
  acceptable activity. Rules such as no violence,
  alcohol or drugs encourage the development of
  autonomy, while rules like honesty and good
  listening encourage greater connectivity.

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New Developments in Cognitive Behavioural Theory

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) uses
  creative hopelessness carefully shifting the
  client to a creative but unstable state in a way
  that allows them to feel safe enough to try a new
  approach to their problems
• Use of metaphor and narrative to connect with the
  person and elicit these changes
• Mindfulness as a technique to allow the person to
  get into with their experience
• These are more holistic approaches, which fit
  even closer with the concept of complexity.

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Restorative Justice

• A Restorative Justice conference (Zehr, 1990)
  brings the offender, victim, and both their
  support people together by trained facilitators
  to encourage the emergence of healing dynamics to
  restore the participants to their place in their
  community.
• The traditional court system almost entirely
  excludes the victim thus losing an important
  means of healing the violation for all involved.
• This more holistic approach encourages the
  strengthening of autonomy and connectivity of all
  involved, and therefore the likelihood of the
  emergence of a healing.