EBP Exchange - UMB School of Social Work

Mark Lipsey and his colleagues have released a Campbell Collaborative Review on the use of CBT with criminal offenders which offers considerable promise. A brief summary of key findings is extracted below. The entire review is available at:

http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/doc-pdf/lipsey_CBT_finalreview.pdf. My experience is that few systematic reviews are this positive–many have difficulty making the case that interventions do what they promise.

Implications for Practice It thus appears to be the general CBT approach, and not any specific version, that is responsible for the overall positive effects on recidivism. Within that framework, inclusion of distinct anger control and interpersonal problem solving components in the CBT program enhances the effects while victim impact and behavior modification components appear to diminish it. What seems to most strongly characterize effective CBT programs is high qualityimplementation as represented by low proportions of treatment dropouts, close monitoring of the quality and fidelity of the treatment implementation, and adequate CBT training for theproviders. It suggests that any representative CBT program that is well-implemented might have results in practice that approach the very positive effects on recidivism produced by the most effective programs documented in the available research studies. It is also encouraging that the effects of CBT were greater for offenders with higher risk ofrecidivism than those with lower risk, contrary to any presumption that higher risk offendersmight be less amenable to treatment. The effectiveness of CBT with higher risk offenders isconsistent with the principles of effective correctional treatment that the best results occurwhen higher-risk offenders receive more intensive services that target criminogenic needs (e.g.,criminal thinking patterns) using cognitive behavioral and social learning approaches.