How has ear acupuncture been used as a treatment programme? (10 Marks)
It’s reported that of the flow of 130000 flow into the prisons in the UK each year, 70,000 inmates have a substance misuse issue. Ear acupuncture is an alternative treatment that has been used in prisons for 5 years and is popular as it’s cheap easily taught and doesn’t require the prisoner to be highly motivated to work. Given that drugs are a huge problem in prisons and society in general, this treatment has great potential.
Wheatley wished to test the effectiveness of ear acupuncture as a treatment in prisons. He compared 350 prisoners who received ear acupuncture twice a week for about a month along with the prison’s standard care programme, the experimental group, with a control group who were deemed eligible and a similar group of person to the experimental but did not receive the treatment - only received the standard care programme. The experimental group received the acupuncture from two trained practitioners in groups for 45 minutes in a relaxed setting where they had five needles placed into one of their ears. The data was collected in a variety of ways namely a questionnaire completed by the prison guards, a questionnaire completed by the prisoners and also quantitative data was collected through looking at a variety of sources such as how many serious incidents they’d had. The prison officers reported much improved behavior in the offenders who received the treatment with more attendance in educational classes, a calmer atmosphere and better communication with staff. Similarly, the prisoners reported feeling calmer, that they were sleeping better and had less cravings for nicotine consumption. The quantitative measure revealed the experimental groups symptoms had improved by 43% whereas the control group’s symptoms had only improved by 25% ( measured through various ways). This led Wheatley to the conclusion that ear acupuncture was 18% more effective than the standard car programme that was being used.

Compare the strengths of different offender treatment programmes? (15 Marks)
The recidivism rate in the UK is approximately 64%. In order to break the ‘revolving door’ phenomenon of repeat offending effective treatment and rehabilitation programmes are needed. It’s clear that at present these are too few and ineffective. Unfortunately, spending money on prisoners is not seen as a priority by governments and tax payers. But, this is short-sighted; breaking the cycle of re-offending is a major step towards reducing crime. There are many different treatment programmes that have been tried for their effectiveness; Cognitive skills programmes, anger management and ear acupuncture being the three most popular.
The biggest strength of all offender treatment programmes has got to be that if they work this could have huge practical application for the prisoners and society at large. Both anger management and cognitive skills programmes aim to deal with the way a person thinks believing that if we can change the way a person thinks or deals with a situation we will ultimately change the way they act. In the case of cognitive skills programmes this is built on the concept that before a criminal act can occur, it must be preceeded by a criminal thought thus by changing the way offenders think we can prevent re-offending. The main cognitive skills programme being cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, and CALM being the main form of anger manangement programme used in prisons. Similarly the alternative treatment of accupuncture has become very popular as a method over the last five years aiming to improve prisoners symptoms of substance misuse (a big factor in UK prisons today). Wheatley tested the effectiveness of ear accupuncture and found much improvement in those who recieved the treatment (25% improvement in the control group compared to 43% in the ear accupuncture group - measured by various scales). Similarly Ireland tested the treatment programme CALM using a multi-variable analysis, looking at both cognitive and behavioural effects, found an overall improvement in prisoners behaviour who’d recieved the programme with over half of the experimental group showing considerable reductions in agressive behaviours and feelings. Cann , however, falls short, as CBT was found to not be effective in this instance (arguments about the programmes creation for men instead of women being cited as reasons for its unsucess).
In terms of practicality, acupuncture comes up top. It’s a fairly cheap remedy and practitioners can be easily trained to use it. In addition the treatment dosen’t require massive commitment from the offenders, unlike other treatments such as CBT and anger management which require you to concentrate on yourself and possibly bring up feelings of distress (although some would argue CBT and anger managment to be better at looking at the route of the problem rather than skimming over it and not looking at the core issue).
There are many strengths to offender treatment programmes - arguably the most important effects are the education and rehabilitation the offenders gain to, at an end, stop them reoffending all together.