Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) has been the most widely delivered cognitive skills program in the prisons of England and Wales. Four quasi-experimental outcome studies have produced mixed results, a qualitative survey of offenders' and facilitators' experience on the program proved useful in program refinement, and a study using random allocation provided evidence that ETS impacts significantly and positively on short-term attitudinal change. This study aims to make a further contribution, using another methodology, to the accumulation of evidence. This was a real-world evaluation, comparing the reconviction outcomes of the population of 17,047 ETS participants in custody from 2000 to 2005 with a national cohort of 19,792 prisoners released over the same period. Overall, prisoners who had attended ETS were found to reoffend at a rate 6.4 percentage points less than the cohort (rising to 7.5 percentage points for program completers) and 9.5 percentage points less than the predicted rate. In all but the very highest risk group and in every sentence length band, the reoffending outcomes for ETS participants were significantly better than for prisoners in the cohort. It is argued that this non-experimental methodology makes a contribution to the 'What Works' evidence. Abstract published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons.
Reconviction Following a Cognitive Skills Intervention: An Alternative Quasi-Experimental Methodology
NCJ Number
243393
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2013 Pages: 48-65
Date Published
February 2013
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) has been the most widely delivered cognitive skills program in the prisons of England and Wales.
Abstract