APPLICATION OF OPERATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY TO ASSESSMENT OF INMATES

Operational psychology describes a way of working within organisations to make them more psychological in approach. By this method psycholog ists work with operational staff in developing ideas in a psychologica l way, thereafter spreading them to the wider organisation. As an exam ple, this paper describes an establishment-wide assessment and treatme nt system for violent offenders under the broad categories of angry ag gression/incentive motivated aggression and the sub-divisions of frequ ent or infrequent occurrence, based on behaviour observation by staff Identification of treatment need is derived from the model, and behavi oural observation as a method of evaluation of treatment effectiveness is described, with preliminary pilot study data. The extended use of the system to the national risk assessment/life sentence planning proc ess demonstrates the feasibility and practical application of the appr oach.