Article
Frank J. Porporino, Ph.D.
For the last close to 50 years, I have always tried to understand how we can improve correctional practice. I first realized as a front-line prison psychologist that my well-intentioned therapeutic efforts with my individual ‘clients’ could pale in comparison to the anti-therapeutic influence that the correctional environment could often inflict on them. How unhealthy correctional cultures, and especially unhealthy prison officer cultures, can impact on both residents and staff, continues to be of major concern today (Arnold, Maycock & Ricciardelli, 2024).
As I moved into managing a significant Head Office research function in a large correctional system, I came to realize that developing, implementing and evaluating good correctional practice could be a dog’s breakfast where operational expediency could steadily and often unpredictably present with barriers and constraints, especially when trying to go to scale with new practice initiatives that worked well at the pilot stage. Implementation, as our correctional Achilles Heel, where frontline realities and the inertia of organizational structures and processes have to be navigated carefully, continues to be of major concern today (Taxman, 2025).
Transitioning eventually to consulting work as an educator and trainer, promoting and helping embed evidence-informed practice internationally, I came to realize that correctional agencies mostly want to do the right thing but are often unwilling to pay the price for doing it (and by price I don’t mean monetary).
Agencies keep looking for new and innovative practice methods and tools, but rather than take the time to adapt and adjust those practices to fit their own circumstances, many prefer to borrow ‘as is’ and attach or paste the new practices onto the other things they do, typically without questioning whether there may be some interference or mismatch that will reduce effectiveness. How to successfully transfer practice from one setting or cultural context to another continues to be of major concern today.
It’s interesting how some of the most prevalent issues that can determine success or failure in the spreading of evidence-informed practice have endured for years. The difficulties in garnering either public or political support for more humane, and smart (rather than soft) on crime policies can be added to the list. Undeniably, these issues will continue to challenge the evolution of good practice in our field.
However, we also have a countervailing force that keeps pointing us in the right direction; a steady flow of research to help us understand the core features of good correctional practice.
State-of-the-art reviews of the available evidence that began to appear several decades ago (Andrews et al., 1990; Bernfeld et al., 2001; MacKenzie, 2006) are supported today by other in-depth reviews arriving at virtually the same conclusions (Cordle & Gale, 2025; Cunha et al., 2024).
The most important leitmotif that pops out of this accumulation of evidence has to do not just with what works but with what works best. Even if there may be difficulty in always doing it well, we can now say fairly definitively what doing it well implies.
Effective interventions should be quality designed from a sound Expert’s Panel: Innovation in rehabilitation Panel de Expertos: Innovación en la rehabilitación theoretical foundation of why they should work, with whom and how; delivered by qualified and committed people with strong relational skills; in settings that support, reinforce and recognize the hard work of identity change; and where there is purposeful and determined follow-through to ensure that important, practical life concerns are also being taken care of (e.g., housing, employment, mental health, substance abuse, etc.).
Importantly, this applies regardless of whether the intervention is primarily vocational, educational, cognitive-behavioural, bio-psycho social, restorative or motivational/inspirational in type or content. Indeed, the research tells us repeatedly that although the type or content of the intervention may matter, what will matter just as much is how well it can motivate the individual to embrace change, offer the possibility of learning new and useful skills and strategies, while remaining appropriately targeted in intensity according to risk.
The intelligent debate for how to understand rehabilitative and reintegration practice today accepts the fact that no one thing can ever work on its own! There is no Golden Goose/Big Bang program that can ‘fix’ offenders. They can’t be so easily ‘corrected’ towards desistance; we at best can stand by them with meaningful and sustained support as they choose to take the walk (or marathon) and as they inevitably stumble but then decide to get back up.
Increasingly accepted as well is that getting correctional practice right means much more than just working with individuals in addressing their risk and needs. We need to strive towards achieving synergistic impact where we engage with, rely on, and steadily focus on expanding timely support from the broader ecosystem impinging on the person.
The ICPA/EuroPris 4th Correctional Research Symposium recently held in Belfast explored this system-focused theme. One of the early-career researchers in attendance reflected on her learning like this:
“Reflecting on the symposium, it’s evident that the path forward in corrections requires more than just incremental adjustments. It demands a fundamental shift in how we integrate research into practice, ensuring that evidence-based approaches are not only understood but also consistently applied. As we move forward, we must prioritize a more holistic, eco-systemic view of rehabilitation, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of individuals, families, communities, and institutions.” – Silvia Martins, Northern Ireland
When the surrounding ecosystem is ignored, even the highest quality interventions can be diluted to the point where they not only lose their effectiveness, but can actually backlash into outcomes that are more negative than doing nothing. A brief example will help illustrate. Years ago, I was involved in a Randomized Control Trial in the US to evaluate a new Re-Entry program that would offer comprehensive and intensive pre-release cognitive-behavioural and substance-abuse treatment. This is what happened:
- Because of inadequate space, individuals assigned to the ‘treatment’ group were moved to a different facility – that was older, uglier, more crowded, where the food was terrible and where the prison officers were nastier!
- Staff were forced (rather than asked to volunteer) to get trained – with no added benefits for their extra efforts. They had to commute longer distances to the program facility. Many rebelled and/or refused to continue. The Program Directors decided to use other untrained staff so that delivery could continue.
- So as to meet targets for enough delivery, group sizes began to increase – from a quality standard base of 12 to 15 per group, to groups of more than 40.
- Because the program took longer than anticipated to deliver, the ‘treated’ offenders were held back from release and the ‘control’ group were released considerably sooner.
I’m sure you have guessed the outcome. The randomly allocated ‘treatment’ group re-offended at a rate significantly higher than the ‘control’ group that was left alone!
Research preoccupied with confirming whether there’s a Golden Goose will only confirm that there isn’t one.
What we need is more research exploring the many intricate connections and inter-dependencies in the correctional ecosystem, as well as research that can help us calibrate how one part of that ecosystem can influence or moderate the impact of another, either positively or negatively (e.g., how homelessness or lack of employment can quickly deplete any newly acquired intent to desist).
When looking at the possible contribution of particular interventions, we need research that examines ways of adding value and improving outcomes. For example, exploring how new technology (e.g., VR) might enhance the appeal of some of our more traditional interventions (e.g., Anger Management); how professional psychological/clinical supervision might help boost the impact of structured, manualized programs (Gannon et al., 2019); how our ‘tried and true’ CBT approaches might be complemented with what have been described as ‘third wave’ therapies (Smith et al., 2024); or taking a serious look at more innovative, indirect approaches for dis-lodging the criminal identity, for example, through strengthening of a different, incompatible identity (e.g., as a Dad; Clancy et al., 2023), or some possible ‘identity fusion’ with respected, pro-social peers (Troshynski et al., 2024) or other potentially influential role models (Peitz & Newson, 2025).
I continue to believe that the research to practice gap can be closed considerably if practitioners, managers, and leaders took more time to become research-informed (Johnson et al., 2018).
At the same time, I would argue that researchers could also contribute significantly to closing the gap if they took more time to co-construct both their research agendas and their methodologies together with not just practitioners and leaders, but also with the justice involved individuals we are supposed to be assisting.
I want to end by offering my own hopefully, helpful advice for how to continue closing the research to practice gap. Here are at least ten truths about how I believe the right kind of research can help guide our efforts in improving practice over the next 50 years.
Evidence-informed practice means more than just doing some of the little things that research says will work. It also means NOT doing the BIG things that research says won’t work.
Some examples of big things that won’t work include overuse of incarceration instead of community alternatives; massive high-security prisons instead of smaller, lower-security detention units; intensive community supervision in place of enhanced and accessible community services; managing the mentally ill and drug addicted with criminal justice instead of providing public health responses; locking up juveniles rather than investing in intensive, early family intervention. I could list more but the point is made.
Introducing our little programs and evidence-based methods is fine, but we also need to redouble our research-informed advocacy to stop doing the BIG things that make matters worse.
We need to respect different kinds of evidences and learn to integrate and consolidate those evidences in designing our practice frameworks.
Our singular challenge in corrections should be to find and integrate varied sources of knowledge about effectiveness, including the knowledge that we can gain from different theoretical frameworks about how people change (Porporino, 2024), and listening to those with lived experience in the systems that we keep trying to improve to apparently help them.
Local research is the best kind of research that can give us the most immediate and relevant implications for practice. Correctional agencies shouldn’t just rely on the research that is ‘out there.’ They need to encourage doing practice-relevant research ‘on the ground’ in their own realities.
Introducing a new or innovative practice can easily get sabotaged as a type of managerial, ‘sausage factory’ mentality takes charge where we want to get the individuals through our programs or interventions any which way we can, rather than slowing down and studying how individuals are reacting, monitoring how and why they are benefitting (or not), and deriving strategies for doing better.
Research can help us develop good evidence-informed practice but research also tells us that good practice can only thrive in values-based environments that are committed to treating people (all the people) with decency, fairness, understanding and respect.
The interactive and mutually reinforcing features that define ‘rehabilitative correctional environments’ have been well described (Mann, 2019; Freestone & Kuester, 2024). Research shows clearly how the prison experience can have a damaging, penetrating and long-lasting impact (Crewe, 2020). Unless that experience can be normalized and made more reasonably healthy, for both staff and residents, then any attempts to introduce good practice may be futile. A garden patch can’t survive in a burning forest.
Answering some urgent, operational issues may need research that can be completed quickly, easily and inexpensively. But that other kind of research that may take time, is difficult to do and may be costly to do is also important to do in order to both refine our approaches and help us avoid future crises.
As an example, longitudinal research has no immediate or quick payoffs. However, some of our most important insights regarding how individuals can fall into and drop out of criminal trajectories has come from studies adopting a life-course developmental perspective.
Research that matters is research that is well executed. But even the most well executed research won’t matter if it isn’t properly communicated, explained, understood and promoted.
Doing good research isn’t easy, but making sure that practitioners, managers, agencies, policy makers and legislators can process and use it properly is even harder.
We are in the complex enterprise of helping people change and we know that people are active, adaptive, reactive and interactive.
This should implore us to always accept that our research-informed solutions for helping people change in one context at one point in time, may not work as well, or even at all, in a different context at a different point in time.
We should be pleased when our research findings agree with practice experience and/or lived experience. But when they don’t, we should be energized to look for explanation.
We should continue asking why the disagreement, has the research looked deeply enough, what might we have missed, and what can we do about it? Research on the effects of solitary confinement is a good example.
The most difficult issues in corrections will never be fully researched or completely understood. The very nature of the issues will evolve and we will always need more research to search for more knowledge to better deal with those issues as they transform.
A good example is what has been referred to as the ‘wicked’ problem of prison violence (Cooke, 2025): “Wicked, not in the sense of being evil or morally wrong, but rather wicked in the sense of a problem that is hard to define and that is impossible to solve in a way that is simple and final; it is a problem characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability and complexity.” Preventing prisoner suicide, intervening with domestic violence, staff recruitment and retention are among some of the many other ‘wicked’ problems in corrections.
-
The academic community should become more attuned to, and spend more time addressing, the most pressing issues in corrections and not just their favorite topics. At the same time, correctional institutions and agencies should open their doors wider and more deliberately welcome the involvement of the academic community.
References
Andrews D, Zinger I, Hoge R, Bonta J, Gendreau P, & Cullen F. (1990). Does correctional treatment work? A psychologically informed meta-analysis. Criminology, 28, 369-404.
Arnold H, Maycock M, & Ricciardelli R. (Eds.) (2024). Prison Officers: International Perspectives on Prison Work. Palgrave Macmillan.
Bernfeld G, Farrington D, & Leschied A. (2001). Offender rehabilitation in practice: Implementing and evaluating effective programs. New York: Wiley.
Clancy A, Maguire M, & Morgan-Armstrong C. (2023). Parenting from prison: Innovative ways of maintaining connection with children, families and significant others. Advancing Corrections Journal, 15, 129–140. Article 10.
Cooke D. (2023). Exploring the Wicked Problem of Violence in Prison. In Tamatea A, Day A, & Cooke D, Eds. Preventing Prison Violence: An Ecological Perspective. Routledge.
Cordle R, & Gale E. (2025). Reducing Reoffending: A Synthesis of Evidence on Effectiveness of Interventions. Ministry of Justice, UK.
Crewe B. (2020) ‘The depth of imprisonment’, Punishment & Society.
Cunha O, Pereira B, Sousa M, & Rodrigues A. (2024). Cognitive behavioural “third wave” therapies in the treatment of justice-involved individuals: A systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 76.
Freestone M, & Kuester L. (2024). Psychologically Informed Planned Environments. In The Wiley Handbook of What Works in Correctional Rehabilitation (Eds L.A. Craig, L. Dixon and T.A. Gannon).
Gannon T, Olver M, Mallion J, & James M. (2019). Does specialized psychological treatment for offending reduce recidivism? A meta-analysis examining staff and program variables as predictors of treatment effectiveness. Clinical Psychology Review.
Johnson L, Elan P, Lebod S, & Burroughs R. (2018). Use of Research Evidence by Criminal Justice Professionals. Justice Policy Journal, v. 6, n 2.
MacKenzie D. (2006). What works in corrections: reducing the criminal activities of offenders and deliquents. Cambridge University Press.
Mann R. (2019). Rehabilitative culture Part 2: An update on evidence and practice. Prison Service Journal, 244, pp 3-10.
Peitz L, Newson M. Sport-based interventions and health in prisons: The impact of Twinning Project on prisoner wellbeing and attitudes. J Health Psychol. 2025 May;30(6):1408-1414.
Porporino F. (2024) Beyond Implementing Evidence-Based Practice: Creating Rehabilitative Experience. Justice Trends, No. 12, June 2024, 36-41.
Smith A, Roberts A, Krzemieniewska-Nandwani K, Eggins L, Cook W, Fox C, Maruna S, Wallace S, & Szifris K. Revisiting the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural therapy for reducing reoffending in the criminal justice system: A systematic review. Campbell Syst Rev. 2024 Jul 31.
Taxman F. (2025). Implementation science (IS) – A game changer for criminology and criminal justice. Criminology & Public Policy, 24, 151–164.
Troshynski E, Willis C, & Forrai K. (2024). “Knowing and Working with Someone Who Has Made It Means I’m Going to Make It Too”: Experiential Knowledge as a Catalyst for Transformation in Re-entry and Beyond. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 52, 10.
Frank Porporino has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a close to 50-year career in corrections as a front-line practitioner, senior manager, researcher, educator, trainer, and consultant. Frank has promoted evidence-informed practice throughout his career and his contributions have been recognised with awards from a number of associations including the ACA, ICCA, Volunteers of America and International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA). Currently he is Editor of the ICPA practitioner-oriented journal, Advancing Corrections, Chair of the ICPA R&D Network, member of the ICPA Practice Transfer Advisory Committee and Board Member and Secretary for the ICPA-North America Chapter.
Advertisement
