Cognitive rehabilitation has been a part of criminal justice for several decades. Recent works by Arnold Goldstein; Aaron Beck; Judith Beck; Ross, Fabiano & Ross; and the National Institute of Corrections have brought cognitive-behavioral structured skill building back into the limelight.
It is almost universally recognized that part of the reason individuals commit criminal offenses is they lack requisite social skills. Either they never learned the skills or learned skills which are counter-productive. These skills must be identified and addressed if we are to successfully reduce the probability of the offender recidivating. KBSolutions has developed and implemented a cognitive-behavioral skill building program to meet this need.
Quick Skills provides 12 modular skill building courses. Each course (unit) can be completed in one month. Courses can be taught independently or combined to form more comprehensive treatment units. Offenders may attend up to two units in a month depending on your program plan. The courses are carefully designed to help offenders remediate skill deficits. A brief description of the course content of each unit follows.
Problem Solving: offenders learn to stop and think before acting; identify the problem; seek alternatives; and plan a course of action (8 sessions).
1. What is a problem: Stop and Insert Space
2. Being a “Problem Detective”
3. Defining a Problem
4. Doing a PMI
5. Examining both sides of a problem
6. Brainstorming for alternatives
7. Targeting specific alternatives
8. Looking down the ROAD
Thinking Traps: offenders learn to identify and counteract thinking which is pro-criminal and “automatic” (5 sessions)
1. The TRAP model
2. Thinking about thinking
3. Identifying recordings
4. Evaluating and changing our recordings
5. Special recordings of offenders
