Chapter 3 Treatment of serious offenders

Section 1 Treatment according to the Problems of Inmates/Probationers/Parolees

Correcting problematic dispositions and environment-related problems that offenders can have is necessary in facilitating their reformation/rehabilitation and reintegration back into society. Treatment tailored to the offender has therefore been enhanced in their correction and probation/parole supervision in recent years under the Penal Detention Facilities Act and the Offenders Rehabilitation Act (See Section 3, Chapter 4, Part 2 and Subsection 2, Section 2, Chapter 5, Part 2).

The problems that serious offenders have can widely vary. However, certain categories of problems can be specific to certain types of offenses; for example, many homicide and injury causing death, etc. offenders lack awareness on the need to respect the lives and bodies of others while many rape offenders have the distorted thinking (cognition) of not regarding sexual damage to be a very serious matter, generally speaking. Treatment of serious offenders therefore needs to be implemented with consideration given to correcting these problems. In addition, serious offenders are often isolated from society for a long period of time due to imprisonment, thus requiring this to be also taken into consideration with their treatment.

This subsection describes part of the treatment currently being implemented for serious offenders from the above points of view.

In order to describe the treatment of serious offenders in a more easily understandable manner a column on the “Way to Recovery of a Homicide Offender”, which assumes a fictitious person imprisoned for 13 years for committing homicide, will be presented in describing the flow of the treatment made available.