LEARNING MORALITY FROM ARISTOTLE. WHAT REHABILITATION PROGRAMMES CAN (AND CANNOT) TEACH OFFENDERS
Dr BILL GLASER *
I start with an example:
Paul is a 25 year old single man with mild intellectual disability who has been repeatedly convicted for serious sexual assaults against children. As a child he was severely neglected and at age 5 he was found by police rummaging in garbage bins for food. He was sexually abused by several adult males (including relatives) throughout his childhood.
As a teenager, he himself started sexually molesting younger children and, as he grew to adulthood, he was able to gain virtually unrestricted access to young children by forming relationships with single mothers. Three jail sentences failed to curtail his offending activities.
He finally underwent a five year residential rehabilitation programme focusing on control of his deviant sexuality, where he learned how to form intimate relationships with his peers and deal with feelings of loneliness and boredom. He is now in the community and apparently offence-free but his quality of life is poor.
His family have virtually abandoned him, his movements still remain restricted (because of his need to avoid contact with children) and he is trapped in an explorative relationship with a promiscuous non-disabled partner who, with Paul's full knowledge, has multiple indiscriminate relationships with others.
At first, the connection between Paul's story and lives of ancient Greeks might seem tenuous. Yet, in Crete, the setting for this conference, where pagan deities still seem to inhabit virtually every mountain, it is timely to remind ourselves that those living in Greece two thousand three hundred years ago knew a number of important and universal truths about human nature which are still applicable today. In particular, the great philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) would have readily understood Paul's only partially successful quest for a virtuous and fulfilled life.
In his ethical writings, particularly the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle devotes extensive thought to the elements of the "good life" and gives much practical advice as to how we can achieve it. This paper argues that Aristotle's thinking is still relevant for the design and implementation of modern-day offender rehabilitation programmes. It also, unfortunately, only too clearly highlights the shortcomings of such programmes.
Characteristics of modern-day offender rehabilitation programmes
Following considerable dissatisfaction with traditional ways of dealing with offenders (particularly imprisonment) after the Second World War, new approaches to sentencing emphasized rehabilitation using a variety of psychological and psychiatric treatment techniques. Unfortunately, by the 1970's it had become apparent that these techniques were not working and for the next twenty years, retribution became a major aim of punishment: if society could not reform criminals, at least it could punish them severely.
By the 1990's, however, empirical studies confirmed once more that traditional sentences such as imprisonment were ineffective and specific types of rehabilitation could reduce recidivism in offenders by up to eighteen percent. The predominant model of rehabilitation became that of "risk management" i.e. paying particular attention to defining and dealing with the "criminogenic" factors which might prompt an offender to re-offend; such factors were empirically shown to include alcohol and drug use, prior history of offending, peer group pressure and innate factors such as poor social skills, anti-social attitudes etc. (Day and Howells, 2002).
Unfortunately, "risk oriented" assessments of an offender's rehabilitation needs, while seemingly based on a scientific approach, continue to face many difficulties. Some of these are methodological (e.g. applying data derived statistically from large populations to the case of an individual offender). Others, however, involve important ethical issues. Essentially the "risk-oriented" model adopts a somewhat "black-box" view of offender functioning: all we need to do is to find the faults in the human machinery which interfere with its functioning and/or establish the circumstances where such faults might appear. Well-functioning offenders are defined, at least implicitly, as those who pose little or no impediment for the smooth running for the wider community. The feelings, thoughts, attitudes, values and aspirations of the human being inside the offending "machine" are generally paid scant regard except when such personal qualities can be manipulated to minimize the risk of re-offending. In effect, the offender is punished twice; first by the courts and secondly by therapists in rehabilitation programmes who make it obvious that unless the interests of the offender and those of society coincide, the latter will always trump the former. (Glaser, 2003).
Another ethical model of offender rehabilitation is obviously needed to deal with these grave ethical concerns. Such a model is that of "good lives" developed over the last five years by Professor Tony Ward and his colleagues, initially working in Melbourne and now in New Zealand. Although this approach currently focuses very much on sex offenders, it is applicable to other types of offenders. Ward and his colleagues argue that:
[when] offenders agree to enter a rehabilitation programme, they are implicitly asking therapists "how can I live my life differently?" and "how can I be a different kind of person?". This requires a clinician to offer concrete possibilities for living good or worthwhile lives to take into account each individual's abilities, circumstances, interests and opportunities. Of course we cannot choose or live offenders' lives for them, but we should be clear about what are reasonable possibilities and help them acquire the requisite skills and capabilities to increase their chances of living such lives. An enhancement model, not a harm-avoidance one, should drive the rehabilitation of offenders. (Ward and Stewart, 2003a).
Offenders, according to this approach, are not to be seen as merely troublesome pieces of machinery that need to be "fixed" in order to ensure the smooth running of society. Rather, they (aided by a therapist) need to understand the choices before them and make a choice, based largely on moral considerations, about the type of life they would like to lead. Most human beings seem to have the same goals in life; for many offenders the problem is that they either do not know how to achieve those goals or have not understood how they might be beneficial to them. These goals include such "primary human goods" as "life", "knowledge", "excellence in play and work", "excellence in agency", "inner peace", "friendship" etc. (Ward and Stewart, 2003b).
Thus in Paul's case, Ward and his colleagues might note that Paul (as he continues to demonstrate) has few skills for realizing needs such as friendship and community. He also does not understand the importance of inner peace or of spirituality, but seeks to fill these voids through a desperate and ultimately unsatisfying search for sexually exploitative relationships with children. (Ward and Stewart, 2003b).
What does Aristotle have to do with all of this?
Aristotle had a surprisingly modern and profound understanding of what offenders do (particularly sex offenders) and what drives them. He well understood the "addictive" nature of most sexual offending and of how many offenders were themselves victims of sexual abuse during childhood:
[things "unpleasant by nature" may result from] custom, for example the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails or even coals or earth, and in addition to these pederasty; for these arise in some by nature and in others, as in those who have been the victims of lust from childhood, from habit (Nicomachean Ethics, VII.5, 1148b, 27).
Furthermore, he also understood the complex relationships between deviant fantasies and deviant behaviours, and the fact that offenders, despite their protestations, often are able to control their behaviours until the opportunity to offend arises:
of these ["brutish or morbid"] characteristics, it is possible to have some only at times, and not be mastered by them, for example, Phalaris may have restrained a desire to eat the flesh of a child or an appetite for unnatural sexual pleasure (Nicomachean Ethics, VII.5, 1149a, 12).
Phalaris, the famous tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily commissioned a Greek craftsman, Perillus to build him a giant bronze bull in which he could imprison rebellious subjects and light a fire underneath the belly of the bull so that the cries of the victim roasting inside emulated the roars of the bull. Perillus, for his troubles, was honoured by becoming the first person to be cooked in this fashion. Aristotle is making the point that even an evil monster such as Phalaris can selectively choose his misdeeds to suit the available opportunity.
More importantly, Aristotle has a range of thoughtful answers for the sorts of questions and contingencies raised by rehabilitation programmes based on "good lives" principles. For example:
1. Do offenders want to change their lives?
This sort of question is central to Ward and Stewart's assertion that offenders are implicitly asking their programme therapists: "how can I live my life differently?". At first sight, the motive of the average offender attending court-ordered rehabilitation seems to be obvious and self-serving: they are going to the programme because they have been ordered to do so and they might experience a worse punishment e.g. (imprisonment) if they did not comply.
Yet, as Aristotle points out in Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics, all things have a characteristic function or activity and they are considered to be "good" if they are functioning or performing that characteristic activity well. The distinctive activity of human beings is activity in accordance with a rational principle. Because virtue is activity in accordance with reason, to function well is to act virtuously.
The greatest good for man (labeled by Aristotle as Eudaimonia, translated most accurately by "flourishing") is therefore "activity of the soul in accordance with the virtues", because this indeed involves a human being functioning at their best.
Aristotle's answer is, in some ways, better than that proposed by Ward and his colleagues. For example, it is not at all clear that we all want primary goods in our lives such as "spirituality" or "knowledge" (as modern popular culture would demonstrate, some of us are very happy living in blind ignorance!). However, we certainly want to live fulfilling or flourishing lives, what Aristotle's response loses in specificity it makes up for in universal ability.
2. How do we persuade offenders to abandon their criminal pleasures?
Unfortunately, even though an offender may grudgingly concede that they wish to lead a flourishing life, they will justifiably grumble that such a life precludes many of their former pleasures, including drugs, pillaging and deviant sex. Indeed, as Ward himself has pointed out, some offenders such as sex offenders derive pleasure not only from their offending activity but from the fact that they are (literally) experts in their trade, being able to avoid protection and enjoy their criminal activities without fear of shame or embarrassment.
The problem is, therefore, much more than simply that of persuading an offender to suffer short-term pain for the advantage of long-term gain. Rather, the offender has to be persuaded to give up an entire identity, with all the fulfillment and satisfaction that goes with that.
Aristotle, in Book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics acknowledges this problem straight away. Indeed, he admits that pleasure could easily be seen as a "good" in human lives because everybody aims for it and, indeed, different pleasures may in fact be seen at "good" in different contexts. However, as he notes, pleasure itself is not a process, it is a state which perfects activities.
Therefore, if the best activity for humankind is that which accords with virtue then the most satisfying pleasure is that which accompanies virtuous activities. Furthermore, we do not carry out a virtuous act merely for the reward of the pleasure it gives; rather, true pleasure arises coincidentally (as it were) when we act virtuously for the sake of the virtue itself.
Later on in the Ethics, Aristotle will state that the most virtuous activity possible for man is that of philosophical contemplation. There is a striking resemblance here to the claims of Eastern philosophical systems regarding the use of meditation to achieve true serenity.
Perhaps this is worth looking at empirically, particularly in our own Western culture that seems to depend heavily on the assumption that people have to "do" things (and, in particular, to behave in certain ways) in order to achieve anything in their lives. Perhaps it really is true that the good life for offenders (and indeed for all human beings) might well be one of contemplation with a view to "knowing oneself".
In any case, Aristotle does hold out a promise here, to someone like Paul. Living a virtuous life may deprive one of thrills but ultimately lead to deeper and more fulfilling pleasures and ultimately to a condition where pleasure ceases to be the main or even a significant motivator for one's actions.
3. Can offenders deliberately learn to lead better lives?
A very violent offender recently complained to me that he was going to sue a psychiatric facility that had been extensively involved in his care for many years because they taught him to express his emotions but neglected to tell him how to control them. Although at one level this was not quite accurate (he didn't want to control his emotions because he seemed to derive considerable pleasure from intimidating and assaulting people), in another sense it was true: my offender clearly had not learned the purpose of expressing one's emotions, nor the appropriate circumstances in which this might occur.
Similar considerations apply to the "learning" of virtue. Aristotle unequivocally insists that virtues are learned, over many years, by habituation and education. However, virtue is more than habit; it is more than reflex action. To show true courage, one must be purposively courageous; one must know that one is displaying courage and one must be motivated by courage itself rather than (say) self-interest. As well, courage must be appropriate in the circumstances: appropriateness is defined as the mean between (in this case) the two extremes of rashness and cowardice. (See Book 2, Chapter 7, of the Ethics). That mean can be established by using practical wisdom (see Book 6) which is not mere cleverness but which enables contemplation of, and choices between, virtuous ends for their own sakes and, in particular, how they fit into the "big picture" of the good life.
Very importantly, Aristotle warns that the process of acquiring practical wisdom is a lengthy one. Consistent with modern empirical theories of moral development (for example, those of Kohlberg) he advises that young men (and women) generally need a fuller education in the virtues before they can acquire the practical wisdom necessary for them to apply these virtues to their own lives. This issue of developmental readiness or maturity is an important one that Ward and his colleagues need to address; many offenders have experienced impoverished and blighted lives, devoid of anything in the way of moral education, and it could well be that they will not be ready to learn to make appropriate "good life" choices for many years; indeed, some of them may never be able to do so.
4. What is stopping offenders from leading better lives?
Socrates said that "no one errs knowingly" and it seems that a lot of modern-day offender rehabilitation programmes naively have accepted this maxim by putting their faith in building up an offender's pro-social knowledge and skills. Aristotle, fortunately, has a far more sophisticated understanding of the convoluted thinking practiced by offenders. Aristotle recognizes that people can know that what they are doing is wrong and yet proceed to do it anyway, through a variety of mechanisms. One of these involves simply paying attention to the knowledge that suits their purpose at the time.
For example, a diabetic may simultaneously know that:
(a) sweet things are bad for them and
(b) sweet things are pleasurable.
But they will knowingly partake of forbidden sweets using (b) as their justification, because (b) is more consistent with their appetites or desires at that particular time (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 7, Chapter 4; see also Hughes, 2001, Chapter 7).
Aristotle's genius lay in his ability to provide this sort of explanation for much evil-doing, particularly the seemingly anomalous evil perpetrated by persons of otherwise good character, which epitomizes certain types of offenders, such as sex offenders and white collar criminals. Their anti-social acts, contrary to popular (and their own) beliefs are not random, impulsive or driven by forces that they can scarcely recognize or control.
Rather, as Aristotle was to anticipate, they rely on an intricate and pervasive system of theories about human behaviour in general and their own functioning in particular, which the offender prefers to keep implicit but which enables them to carefully plan and implement their offending behaviour over a long period of time (Mann and Beech, 2003).
Paul's sexual assaults on children were never a product of wayward or uncontrollable impulses, even though his intellectual disability might have led one to suspect this. Rather, he would spend months getting to know the mothers of his victims, gaining their trust, and persuading them to give him ample opportunities to be alone with their children, all the while selectively justifying these activities (even though he fully knew that they were wrong) by statements to himself such as: "they enjoy it", "I need it" and, most ironically of all, "it didn't harm me when other people did it to me".
Many modern rehabilitation approaches take account of these so-called "cognitive distortions" and challenge the offender, in various ways, some quite subtle, to become aware of them. Good lives theory acknowledges the usefulness of such techniques but seeks (as Aristotle probably would) to embed them into the wider enterprise of giving the offender competencies and skills to lead a fulfilling life without sinning.
But who gets to live the good life?
Unfortunately, it is at this stage that both the Aristotelian and "good lives" enterprises appear to fail spectacularly. Aristotle builds us up to the climactic idea of the ultimate fulfilling life: the life of philosophical reasoning about unchanging truths which is activity in accordance with human kind's highest virtue i.e. rationality. Yet in the concluding 10th book of the Ethics, Aristotle injects a healthy dose of reality (some might even say cynicism). It is clear that the majority of the population will never be able to live this sort of life, which can only be accessed by a small number of the leisured and the privileged. For the rest, the subtle training in, and appreciation of, the virtues and practical wisdom is simply not available. They will have to be forced to be good, whether they like it or not:
But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practice and be habituated to them [i.e. virtues], we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life; for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than the sense of what is noble (Nicomachean Ethics) X.9,1180a,1).
This is a bitterly disappointing conclusion, and seemingly deserving of Bertrand Russell's scornful views that Aristotle, is after all, nothing more than a smug conservative prig keen to indoctrinate the populace in middle-class values.
Yet perhaps Aristotle's realism is only sensible. As Alasdair MacIntyre points out, the great advantage of Aristotle's thinking is that it emphasizes "certain feature of human life which are necessarily or almost inevitably the same in all societies, and that, as a consequence of this, there are certain evaluative truths which cannot be escaped." (MacIntyre, 1987, page 95). Thus all societies need some notions of truth, justice, friendship etc. (i.e. Aristotelian virtues) in order to survive.
On the other hand, while such notions might guide us as to the possibilities of a virtuous life, they do not necessarily tell us how to choose which possibilities might suit the individual. Furthermore, the more an individual tailors the choices to their own life, the more likely they are to look for guidance about, and the interpretation of, the relevant possibilities to those of their contemporaries. Aristotle, though probably a virtuous man, nevertheless accepted a society where women were considered to be naturally inferior and slavery was taken for granted; while virtue is not necessarily historically or culturally relative, it is unfortunately, at least in part, defined by the values of time and place.
Can Aristotelian ethics and, by implication, good lives theory be rescued from the accusation that they are, in fact, merely subtle forms of indoctrination? I think they can, provided we recognize that they both represent ideals towards which we should aspire, rather than real-world possibilities. It is unlikely that any of us ever will live the perfectly fulfilled life. But we can certainly try and achieve some satisfaction (and even genuine pleasure) in being virtuous, even though at times we can only acknowledge (as with, say, learning calculus or biochemistry) in retrospect the satisfaction of learning such knowledge, well after we were forced to do so.
Similar considerations may well apply for good lives theory. We may well have to force Paul to learn techniques for avoiding re-offending. Yet, at the very least, we should be able to say to him: "we are doing this so that you can lead a more fulfilling life" rather than "this is necessary to correct the faults which have made you a danger to society."
Unfortunately, much cruelty has been inflicted on offenders with the justification that it is "for their own good" (Glaser, 2003). Prisons, after all, were originally meant to reform criminals rather than merely containing them. There is a danger of becoming hypocritical here: the promise of a fulfilled life simply becomes a justification for multiple harsh restrictions on Paul's already miserable lifestyle. He would understandably become suspicious of the true intentions of his therapeutic team, hardly the trusting relationship that might foster successful outcomes in his rehabilitation.
No easy answers exist for this dilemma. Perhaps the best we can do is to be as honest as we can in our dealings with Paul. Yes (we might say to him), we have to reduce his risk to society and that will entail some suffering for him (and Aristotle, unlike many of his successors, saw no virtue in suffering). But we will try as far as possible to treat him less like a faulty machine and more like a person who has genuine needs, desires and emotions. And that in turn means not only a reduction in his dangerousness but an enhancement of his humanity. Hopefully Aristotle would see that as enough to place Paul on the path to at least some modest form of fulfillment.
NOTES
* Visiting Fellow, Departments of Criminology and Psychology, University of Melbourne
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in J.L. Ackrill (1973), Aristotle's Ethics London : Faber and Faber
Day A and Howells K (2002). Psychological treatments for rehabilitating offenders : Evidence-based practice comes of age. Australian Psychologist, 37(1), 39-47
Glaser, W. (2003). Therapeutic jurisprudence: An ethical paradigm for therapists in sex offender treatment programs. Western Criminological Review 4(2), 143-154
Hughes, Gerard J (2001). Aristotle on Ethics, London : Routledge
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1987). A Short History of Ethics. London : Routledge
Mann, Ruth E and Beech, Anthony R (2003). Cognitive distortions, schemas and implicit theories. In Tony Ward, D. Richard Laws, Stephen M Hudson (eds) Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies. Thousand Oaks (Calif.): Sage
Ward, Tony and Stewart, Claire A (2003a). Good lives and the rehabilitation of sex offenders. In Ward et al (eds.) op cit
Ward, Tony and Stewart, Claire A (2003b). The treatment of sex offenders : Risk management and good lives. Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 34(4), 1-8.
Copyright 2004. Greek Legal and Medical Conference