As the premier correctional treatment setting in Ontario, it had been charged specifically with the task of exploring criminality as it is related to its inmate population. Douglas Quirk and I took that injunction to heart and set out to explore the effect of psychological treatment on post-incarceration outcome. That is, did treatment have any affect on whether or not the inmate was less likely to be reincarcerated. That involved two main tasks:

1. assessing the factors underlying criminal thinking and behaviour

2. treating those factors so that they are less likely to get the individual in trouble with the law.

It so happened that, in 1976, shortly after the OCI opened, Samuel Yochelson, and Stanton Samenow published the results of a study of criminal thinking in which they claim to have identified the errors of thinking that characterized the criminal mind. Building on their research, a test was developed which yielded six statistically-derived scales as follows:

1. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of feelings of guilt

2. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of feelings of failure

3. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of emotional distress

4. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of sensitivity to others

5. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of closeness

6. Hypersensitivity to and rejection of discipline

Six day-long large-group treatment workshops using more-or-less-standard psychological treatments addressing each of these issues were delivered, with two-year post-incarceration follow-up results determining that both the amount of treatment provided and the extent to which test scores were modified by these treatment workshops were shown to be related to two year post-release recidivism. The treatment workshops both lowered test scores and resulted in lower recidivism rates, as measured by whether or not subjects reoffended, time on the street until re-offence, and seriousness of re-offence in the two years post-release.

Given that the amount of treatment time required to achieve these results was essentially miniscule, this type of approach should be adopted by any jurisdiction interested in the prevention of crime