Does the moment to attend and the kind of crime influence the engagment for therapy ?
As a professional prison psychologist, we are frequently led to ponder about the interaction between our therapeutic duty and the demands of the prison sentence, starting with the unavoidable constraints which result from the environmental context of prison life. We have often been struck by the attitude of some inmates who seemed more reluctant to engage in therapy once their trial had occurred. The following essay therefore deals with how differently prisoners accept to engage in therapy depending on the length of their jail sentence, and suggests that we should consider therapy according to the patient’s dynamic psyche in connexion with his / her situation in the unfolding of his / her sentence. This study trie to appraise if the moment to attend and the kind of crime influence the pledging for therapy. Thus, relying on pre-defined markers, we have completed a comparative study of twenty inmates undergoing criminal procedure. The study aimed at assessing how inmates accept to engage in therapy before and after their trial, hypothesizing that the time before trial might prove a priviledged period. In addition, the numerous articles dealing with the therapy of sexual offenders on the one hand, and the implementation of therapy injunction introduced by the highly innovating law in FRANCE of June 17th 1998 on the other hand, have led us to our study by differentiating them from psychopath criminals, so as to identify what distinguishes them regarding their attitude to therapy. Our study shows that the subjects are more engage in therapy before judgment and its difficult to mobilize them after judgment. This difference is accrued for the sex offenders. When analyzing the data we gathered, we have also attempted to define the limits and the stakes of such acceptance of therapy.