Corrections_Today_March_April_2023_Vol.85_No.2

NEWS&VIEWS

CORRECTIONAL CHAPLAIN PERSPECTIVES

Faith-based mentoring Post-pandemic and beyond By John Byrne, Director, Student Programming, Crossroads Prison Ministries C orrectional programming has evolved from the “Nothing Works” doctrine put forward

by Robert Martinson in the early 1970’s. 1 Martinson’s influential re port along with co-workers Douglas Lipton and Judith Wilks, concluded prison rehabilitation programs did not work. As a result, many politi cians pushed for the cancellation of costly correctional rehabilitation programs and the implementation of stronger sentencing guidelines. In the 1990’s, Canadian research ers Bonta, et al (1990) developed the framework for the risk-need-respon sivity model for assessing a person’s risk of reoffending and targeting specific risk factors that could be reduced through programming. 2 This model continues to be influential in corrections. Criminogenic risk factors fall into two categories, “static” — those that cannot be changed through programming, such as past criminal history, and “dynamic” — those risk factors that can be influenced by programming. Three of the primary dynamic risk factors contributing to arrest and incarceration relate to a person’s ori entation towards anti-social beliefs,

istock/AsiaVision

attitudes and associations. Reha bilitation strives to help the person with a history and orientation toward behavior that has a deleterious im pact on their community and become someone who thinks and acts in pro-social ways that strengthen the community where they will live.

Since the announcement of the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) by President George W. Bush in 2004, mentoring has been recommended as a key program component for successful community reintegra tion. 3 Data on prison mentoring is not ubiquitous for several reasons.

10 — March/April 2023 Corrections Today