About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

20 September 2015

Fighting Crime with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

The Freakonomics podcast has a very interesting, two part episode on the use of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) in fighting crime. Based on three, widely different case studies - fighting crime in in the inner city gangs of Chicago, rehabilitation of child soldiers in Liberia and lower risk domestic abuse cases in the UK; the podcasts certainly make a compelling case. In all three cases, participants are put through a CBT course with support and mentoring; and the results are quite impressive - an average of about 40% reduction across the use cases in the best cases.

Given South Africa's similarities to some of the case studies, I wonder if anyone has thought about using the same approach? The stories are certainly compelling.