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The concept of criminogenic need is widely used, both to understand offending behaviour and in the design of treatment programmes. However, it is recognised that criminogenic need may differ dependent upon the nature of the offending, the cultural context and the specific forensic population. In order to develop programmes that successfully effect change in offenders, it is important to identify the factors that may be implicated in offending and to target these factors. This research explores the criminogenic needs of a group of men attending a community‐based introductory sex offender programme, through their victim apology letters, using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The data suggest that these men do not understand themselves or their behaviour in terms of criminogenic need, for the most part, and the implications for this are considered.

This paper aims to argue that to address those factors that contribute to the probability of offending, the origins of such factors should be understood, and interventions that recognise the functional aspects of criminogenic capacities should be developed.

The paper provides a theoretical basis for trauma sensitive practice by providing an evolutionary understanding of human harmfulness alongside a summary of the impact of adversity and abuse on the developing child.

The paper proposes an overarching framework that uses compassion-focused therapy for risk reducing interventions with men who cause harm to others.

This paper encourages forensic practitioners to develop a trauma aware approach to intervention design and delivery. The paper provides an overview of a compassion-focused therapy as approach to intervention that conceptualises criminogenic capacities within a more holistic and functional framework.

Forensic interventions have been slow to assimilate evidence from adverse childhood experience research and have therefore been limited in their ability to address the functional origins of criminogenic need. This paper offers a framework that allows practitioners to address risk while also allowing individuals to process their own trauma and adversity.

This paper aims to outline the human capacity for harmfulness and details the role of trauma and adversity in the consolidation of harmful capacities.

The paper is a theoretical overview and offers a rationale for developing more trauma sensitive practices.

The paper proposes compassion focussed therapy (CFT) as an overarching approach to organising interventions.

The paper invites practitioners to develop a holistic approach to forensic interventions incorporating a collaborative formulation and personal objectives for service users.

CFT and trauma informed approaches to working with risk are relatively new in the forensic field. This paper provides a rationale for the further development of such approaches within forensic settings.

This paper aims to provide a description of a trauma sensitive intervention for men who have committed sexual offences. The intervention aims to support men to process and make sense of their own experience of trauma before inviting them to acknowledge their role in causing harm to others. The intervention draws on compassion focussed therapy (CFT) as the overarching therapeutic modality.

As part of a service evaluation changes in routine repeat measures completed by service users were analysed prior to joining the intervention and after 12 months of intervention. Service users were encouraged to provide regular feedback relating to their experience of the intervention at regular intervals. This feedback was collated and patterns were identified collaboratively to understand the context for assessed change in the measures.

Prior to the intervention men reported high levels of shame and limited experiences of guilt (as compassion for others). Early findings indicate that men experience less shame and increased experiences of guilt after 12 months. An increase in insight into risk was also evident. Service user feedback pointed towards a more engaging therapeutic style and highlighted the importance of both a collaborative and trauma sensitive approach.

This is the first evaluative description of forensic CFT for sexual offending. Findings offer insight into potential future directions for forensic interventions with this population.

Mental health care in prisons involves many stakeholders. As a consequence, the goals involved are divergent but there is no sound theoretical framework that accounts for the complexity of care in prison. This paper considers a broad theory and its conceptual framework that differentiates between prisoners with emotional suffering and those without, the need for care from an objective point of view as opposed to a subjective one, and the need for care related to mental health problems versus care related to limiting recidivism.

Community safety partnerships have a new statutory duty to reduce reoffending. A key stage in developing a strategy to do this is to understand the problem. The development of offender problem profiles will be an important part of the process. This article, drawing on experience from local partnerships, discusses how partnerships might go about developing offender problem profiles.

Forensic mental health programs (FMHPs) in Ontario, Canada provide rehabilitation and supervision services. However, models available to guide their delivery are primarily adapted from fields outside of forensic mental health. To partially fill this gap, this paper aims to provide a general review of the process a multi-professional team took to develop the Integrated Forensic Program [IFP]-Ottawa Model of Risk Management & Recovery.

Working groups were initiated to identify the needs of patients in their local setting, conduct a literature review on care delivery models in forensic mental health and build a service delivery model specific to forensic mental health.

The resulting model places patient engagement at its centre and encompasses eight domains of need that contribute towards the patient’s recovery and the management of the safety risk they pose to the public, namely, the basic needs, diversity and spirituality, social, occupational, psychological, substance use, physical health and mental health domains.

The IFP-Ottawa Model of Risk Management & Recovery provides a framework to which therapeutic group services for persons in FMHPs can be aligned.

The leadership teams in FMHPs could use this framework and the method used for its development to ensure group services provided at their FMHPs are evidence-informed and coincide with their patients’ specific needs.

This study aims to critically evaluate the trajectory of the “Child First” guiding principle for youth justice in England and Wales, which challenges adult-centric constructions of children (when they offend) as “threatening” and asserts a range of theoretical and principled assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s evolving capacity.

Focussing on how Child First seeks to transcend the socio-historically bifurcated (polarised/dichotomised) thinking and models/strategies/frameworks of youth justice, this study examines the extent and nature of this binary thinking and its historical and contemporary influence on responses to children’s offending, latterly manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches.

Analyses identified an historical and contemporary influence on bifurcated responses to offending by children in the United Kingdom/England and Wales, subsequently manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches. Analyses also identified a contemporary, progressive challenge to bifurcated youth justice thinking, policy and practice through the “Child First” guiding principle.

By tracing the trajectory of Child First as an explicit, progressive challenge to previous youth justice thinking and formal “approaches”, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to question whether, in taking this approach, Child First represents a clean break with the past, or is just the latest in a series of strategic realignments in youth justice seeking to resolve inherent tensions between competing constructions of children and their behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a general review of care for individuals on the autism spectrum, including Asperger's syndrome within a medium secure setting.

The authors undertook a review of the current literature relating to pathways to care, offending characteristics and treatment interventions. They examined the available evidence and current practice.

Available evidence suggests offending characteristics of individuals with autism are different to those of mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Limited evidence in treatment interventions and in risk management for those with autism presents a challenge to clinicians. The heterogeneity makes a strong case for an individualised case formulation approach to treatment and risk management.

This paper offers an overview of the current evidence base relating to the treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorders within medium secure settings.