The voice of aggression : the understanding and management of the angry offender

Abstract

Violence and aggression cause harm not only to its direct victims, but to society in general. The incidence of violent crimes in Malta, although much lower than in other countries, is still unfortunately on the increase. The perpetrators of these crimes are very often judged and labelled in a negative manner. As a professional in this field, I am frequently in contact with this client group, whose actions cause so much pain and misery to others around them. I was determined to find out what instigates such anger, leading to the destructive aggression manifested by this specific cohort. Literature identifies various factors leading to aggression, and therefore this study adopts a biopsychosocial perspective to incorporate the different aspects in the individuals’ life story, including the Attachment Theory Bowlby (1973,1977), Ainsworth et. al.(1978) and Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory. To date, no study has been conducted on this specific topic with service users of the Department of Probation and Parole, the context in which this study was conducted. Currently, clients who manifest aggressive or violent behaviour are usually provided with one-to-one interventions by their probation officers and are simultaneously referred to other professionals, such as therapists, according to the needs. The study is based on narrative interviews with a small sample of individuals who are on a probation order for similar offences. The individual interviews were followed by a focus group interview attended by a number of probation officers directly involved with this specific client group, to corroborate the results of the first set of interviews. The participants’ stories underpinned a legacy of misery and pain, resulting from their difficult family backgrounds as well as absence of adequate support throughout their life. These, together with other factors, were confirmed as being significant contributors to the anger management problems within their client group by the professional cohort interviewed. The data emerging from the focus group underpinned the importance of introducing more advanced and specific means of intervention. The probation officers proposed that group anger management programmes could compliment the current individual interventions currently provided. This, together with a set of other recommendations, have been extracted from the data collected in the study, with the hope that the service provided to the violent and aggressive client group is more holistic, and contributes towards the healing of both the victim and the perpetrator.