Kaizen offending behaviour programme
The MoJ yesterday (9 January 2025) published an evaluation of the Kaizen offending behaviour programme which is designed for adult males who have been convicted of sexual (SO), intimate partner violence (IPV) or general violence (GV) offences. The researcher, Rebecca Hubble, makes it clear that this is an uncontrolled study (there was no comparison group) so while the results are positive, they are not conclusive evidence of Kaizen’s effectiveness.
The programme
Allocation to Kaizen Programme is based on offending history and assessment of risk, needs, strengths, and responsivity factors. Participants should be assessed as high or very high risk of reoffending on either the OASys Sex Predictor (OSP), OASys Violence Predictor (OVP) or the OASys Electronic Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (ESARA), and as presenting with at least one or more strong criminogenic need items in the Self-Management, Offence-Supportive Attitudes and Relationships domains.
Kaizen is based on a biopsychosocial model of change that integrates existing models of rehabilitation, including Risk, Need and Responsivity (RNR) principles, the Good Lives Model (GLM) , and desistance theory to provide a cognitive-behavioural approach that is strength-based and skills-focused.
Kaizen aims to help people develop goals and skills that facilitate change in four criminogenic need domains targeted by the programme, namely, ‘Self-Management’, ‘Offence-Supportive Attitudes’, ‘Relationships’, and ‘Sexual Interests’. A fifth domain that includes desistance factors called a ‘Sense of Purpose’ is also targeted.
The study
An uncontrolled before-after evaluation was conducted to determine whether Kaizen participants were making positive progress against key programme aims, measured by the Success Wheel Measure (SWM). The SWM, designed by HMPPS, assesses participant progress in the following domains: (1) Managing Life’s Problems, (2) Healthy Thinking, (3) Positive Relationships, (4) Healthy Sex (for those with a sexual offence conviction only), and (5) Sense of Purpose (desistance from crime). The research also aimed to identify if individual (relating to the person) or programme delivery factors affected changes in the SWM scores, and whether these changes varied between assessment domains.
Findings
- A large increase in total SWM scores from pre-to-post programme participation was found, indicating positive progress against Kaizen targets.
- Participants with lower initial insight and skills showed greater improvements, with a large effect size.
- The small group format (2-3 participants) led to greater SWM score changes compared to the normal group format (8 participants), though this effect size was small.
- No other factors predicted SWM score changes.
- Positive changes in SWM scores were seen across all rating types, with greater changes noted when rated by facilitators. Pre-programme strengths had a greater impact when rated by participants.
- All SWM domains showed positive score changes, with lower changes in the Sense of Purpose domain compared to Managing Life’s Problems, Healthy Thinking and Positive Relationships domains.
- The influence of individual and programme delivery factors was consistent across domains.
Conclusions
The researcher emphasises that the lack of a control group means changes in SWM scores cannot be directly attributed to Kaizen participation, they could be due to unobserved factors such as natural improvement, or SWM scorer bias. It’s also important to note that the SWM’s validation is limited to sexual offending, which presents an additional limitation. Therefore, results should be viewed as indicative rather than conclusive evidence of Kaizen’s effectiveness.
Nevertheless, these interim outcome evaluation results suggest that participation in Kaizen is associated with positive changes in key programme targets. Participants with lower levels of insight appear to benefit more. The results also suggest that change was largely equivalent across individuals with different offence histories, reinforcing Kaizen’s broader scope of offending.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here