Christian Psychotherapy for Convicts?

Repeated research studies have revealed that secular efforts at rehabilitation have been unsuccessful in preventing recidivism. Not one of the various approaches to psychological counseling has been able to demonstrate success statistically in helping inmates rehabilitate. Among nearly 300,000 prisoners released in 15 states in 1994, 67.5% were re-arrested within 3-years. A study of 1983 releases estimated 62.5% (Langan and Levin, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 2002).

Historically, this has been true according to the publication of The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment (Lipton, Martinson, & Wilks,1975), which highlighted the controversy as to whether correctional treatment reduces recidivism. This review examined a variety of treatments (e.g., individual and group psychotherapy and counseling, intensive casework, and skill development) and reported the results on a number of different outcome criteria (e.g., adjustment to prison life, vocational success, recidivism rate). The relationship between any single treatment or combination of programs and recidivism rate was far from being convincing. In a review of the Lipton study, Martinson concluded that "with few isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism."

Psychotherapy has proven to be effective with most populations. Consumer Reports (Seligman, 1995) published an article that concluded patients who benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as therapists and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse.

So the question remains: Why have psychotherapeutic efforts been unsuccessful in reducing recidivism rates within the prison population? It is more than likely possible that the