The Wiley Handbook on What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

An Evidence-Based Approach to Theory, Assessment, and Treatment

William R. Lindsay, Leam A. Craig, Dorothy Griffiths, William R. Lindsay, Leam A. Craig, Dorothy Griffiths

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781119316237, 9781119316251
• eBook ISBN: 9781119316282
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Forensic Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Brings together the growing amount of evidence on the assessment and treatment of offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Written by a team of international experts, this comprehensive and informative book provides a contemporary picture of evidence-based practice for offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By adopting a scientist-practitioner position directed at an academic level with practitioner guidelines, it provides a valuable reference source for professionals from allied disciplines who are using or seeking to apply research for this client group.

The Wiley Handbook of What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: An Evidence Based Approach to Theory, Assessment and Treatment is divided into five sections: Introduction, Phenotypes & Genotypes and Offending Behavior, Validated Assessments, Treatment, and Conclusions. The Introduction offers an overview of the entire book and is followed by a second overview covering the ethics of evidence-based practice. After that come chapters on protecting the rights of people with intellectual disabilities in correctional settings, and behavioral and cognitive phenotypes in genetic disorders associated with offending. The third part of the book studies the assessment of individuals with anger and violence issues, inappropriate sexual behavior, alcohol abuse, and emotional difficulties. Next comes a section that looks how to offenders can be treated. The final section discusses future directions and requirements for offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

• Provides an overview of the ethical challenges and issues faced by those who work with intellectually and developmentally disabled offenders
• Focuses on proof of treatment effectiveness and validation of assessment methods to direct readers toward "What Works"
• Features contributions from authors across the entire English-speaking world including the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

The Wiley Handbook of What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: An Evidence Based Approach to Theory, Assessment and Treatment will appeal to all who work in the field of offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including nursing staff, social workers and probation officers, medical and psychology staff, and more.

Part I
Introduction

1
What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Systems for Evaluating Evidence and Book Overview

Leam A. Craig^1,2,3, William R. Lindsay, and Dorothy Griffiths⁴

1 Forensic Psychology Practice Ltd, Sutton Coldfield, UK

2 Centre for Applied Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK

3 School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, UK

4 Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

1.1 Introduction

For some years there have been systems for analysing the quality of studies in order to gauge the effectiveness of any assessment or intervention. For people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) this is especially important because it is a population that has traditionally been ignored on the one hand and on the other, grateful for any interest that professionals may show, whatever the evidence for effectiveness (Sturmey and Didden 2014). The evidence base is essential to any therapeutic investigation. However, looking across therapies for this client group, one quickly realizes that therapies spring up right, left, and centre and can be carried forward more effectively by evangelical zeal than they can by scientific rigour. Indeed, when dealing with a class of individuals who are generally devalued, as with those in the current volume, one becomes aware that they may be vulnerable to anyone who takes a genuine interest, however idiosyncratic. Therefore, it has become extremely important to review the evidence base for the range of assessment and therapeutic techniques that are currently used in the field of offenders with intellectual disabilities. The double‐blind cross‐over placebo trial is viewed by many as the sine qua non of experimental approaches to treatment evaluation. But it is not the only approach. Several sciences are not experimental: the sciences of astronomy and palaeontology have a hard time manipulating independent variables.

Single‐subject research designs involve a different approach to science. Rather than pursuing statistical significance, single‐subject research pursues demonstrating a replicable and consistent functional relationship between an independent variable and client behaviour. If a therapist or experimenter can turn a behaviour on and off by systematically applying and withdrawing an independent variable and observe a systematic change in the client's behaviour, then we can say that we have truly identified an independent variable (Baer et al. 1968). Hence, reversal, multiple baseline, and other single‐subject designs can show causal relationships between independent and dependent variables. Single‐subject experimental designs can be clearly differentiated from case studies, including case studies with data. Single‐subject designs demonstrate a functional relationship between treatment and outcome, whereas case studies do not.

However, any experimental design by itself does not directly address the social significance of behaviour change: it would be possible to have experimental control over an effect of trivial magnitude. It would also possible to have huge changes in socially irrelevant variables. Study designs should address social significance by a variety of methods known as social validity (Wolf 1978). Social validity can be demonstrated using ratings of the importance of behaviour change from the client, and significant others, in the environment. This is especially true for offending since the effectiveness of interventions is so important to the public. It could be argued that there is little point of an intervention that is hugely successful for offenders' self‐esteem but has no impact on rate of offending.

In this introduction we will review the principle methods for assessing the effectiveness of assessment and treatment techniques for all interventions, including those for offenders with IDD.

1.2 The Cochrane System

The Cochrane review system has been influential in categorizing evidence on the effectiveness of psychological and pharmaceutical interventions from different studies. In earlier iterations, the system evaluated the quality of evidence in five categories. The highest quality of evidence from clinical research was from systematic reviews including at least one randomized controlled trial (RCT) and high‐quality meta‐analyses that include controlled trials. The second level of acceptable evidence was one RCT. The next quality of evidence included cohort studies and waiting‐list controlled trials and the quality below that included well designed observational studies and well controlled case studies. The final (5th) quality of evidence was based on expert opinion and influential reports.

In 2005 the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins et al. 2011, 2016; Cochrane Library www.cochranelibrary.com) adopted an alternative strategy and rather than assessing studies for level of quality, they took the approach of assessing ‘risk for bias’. Their considerations were now confined to assessment of studies and especially RCTs. The first recommendation was to avoid using scales to assess the quality of the study. The subsequent recommendations were concerned with focus on the internal validity and risk of bias of the study. Risks of bias indicate flaws in the study that are likely to undermine the reliability, validity, and integrity of the findings. These risks include incomplete outcome data, different aspect of blinding (e.g. participants, therapists, outcome assessments), the length of the ‘washout’ period in crossover trials and criteria for exclusion of participants.

One of the most prominently cited technical reviews was Guyatt et al. (1995) in which they outline a series of relative risks to the strength of evidence in a study. For example, the first risk is having heterogeneity of treatment effects in different studies. The greater the difference in treatment effects indicated greater heterogeneity in study outcomes which in turn indicated greater risk to the integrity of findings. Heterogeneity might indicate unexplained differences in results from study to study. Therefore, reviews with greater heterogeneity were ranked lower than those without significant heterogeneity. They also noted that the potential for bias was much greater in cohort and case studies (no matter how well controlled) than in RCTs and subsequently recommendations from these were much weaker. The Cochrane recommendations (Higgins et al. 2011, 2016; Sterne et al. 2016) are that the bases for bias assessments and judgements by the reviewer(s) should be explicit in the review. The Cochrane system remains the most exacting of review systems for clinical evidence.

1.3 What Works Levels System

In analysing the quality of studies on the treatment of offending behaviour, reviews have for some time employed the evaluation of evidence supporting particular therapeutic techniques and their use with particular types of offenders. The work has been subsumed under the category ‘What Works’ in the treatment and management of offenders to reduce crime. Sharman et al. (1997) developed a technique for reviewing the evidence in response to a request by the US Congress for an evaluation of the effectiveness of annual grants from the Department of Justice of more than $3 billion. Since then, there has been an accumulation of ‘What Works’ literature in mainstream criminal research, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editors
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Phenotypes and Genotypes and Offending Behaviour
• Part III: Validated Assessments
• Part IV: Treatment
• Part V: Conclusions
• Index
• End User License Agreement