IT WAS the big idea in how to reform criminals: get them to think about their emotions and empathise with victims.

The Prison Service has spent £150 million on psychological sessions for inmates since the early 1990s. Tens of thousands have sat through courses titled Reasoning and Rehabilitation and Enhanced Thinking Skills.

The problem is, it has not worked. Home Office studies have shown that the method makes no difference to reconviction rates once prisoners are released. In some cases, it seems to make matters worse.

Instead, the Prison Service and the Probation Service are now concentrating on providing offenders with literacy and numeracy skills in thehope that they can get jobs and that will keep them from crime.

Cash had been allocated for the more psychological courses to continue until 2006 in up to 100 jails, but the Treasury is reluctant to provide any more unless there is proof that the investment produces results.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “These disappointing results show that the Prison Service was clutching at straws when it prematurely invested so much public money.”

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: “The obsession with targets means prisoners who are totally unsuited for these courses are being put on them. There is no follow-up when they are released, so it is not surprising that there are high levels of recidivism.”

Prison Service officials were persuaded by the “cognitive skills programmes” after courses in Canada showed they had success in cutting reoffending. The aim is to teach prisoners to think about their actions and the consequences of their crime for themselves and their victims. Groups of between ten and twelve prisoners are taught to address self-control, problem solving and moral behaviour.

Part of the course involves role play. One scenario involves a prisoner arranging to meet his girlfriend in a pub but arriving late to find her talking to a stranger, getting him to think through his actions rather than starting an argument.

Another involves a prisoner taking a friend to hospital and being chased by police in a vehicle with a flashing blue light. The prisoner is expected, as a result of being encouraged to think about his actions, to stop rather than speed away.

The Reasoning and Rehabilitation course involves 36 two-hour sessions and the Enhanced Thinking Skills course involves 20 two-hour sessions. The courses cost an estimated £2,000 to £3,000 per place, about the cost of feeding a prisoner for five to six years.

Among low to medium-risk offenders, the reconviction rate one year after leaving jail was actually higher for those who had been on the courses.

The biggest study of adult male and young offenders found “no differences” in the reconviction rates one and two years after inmates left jail. Although there was a difference in one-year reconviction rates when dropouts from courses were taken into account, even this was not sustained. “The differences in reconviction rates at one year are not maintained at two years following release from prison,” the Home Office research said.

It suggested that the only way of reducing reoffending in the long term would be booster courses for freed prisoners. The study is based on a sample of 2,195 adult males who took courses in 1998-2000 and 1,534 young offenders on courses in 1995-2000.

Andrew Coyle, Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, said: “The tragedy is it was presented by some as the Holy Grail towards reducing recidivism. While there is some evidence that some programmes work for some people in certain circumstances, the most important influences are accommodation, employment and support on leaving prison.”

David Wilson, Professor of Criminology of the University of Central England, said: “Psychologists persuaded people that these courses could produce a reduction in criminality by a measurable percentage. This was music to the ears of politicians.”

The Prison Service said: “Researching reconviction rates is complex; reporting of offences, comparisons of offender profile and timescales can all impact on results. All programmes are based on research about what works in reducing reoffending. We take the results seriously but they must be considered within the wider body of evidence.”

In psychology, teaching patients to separate emotions from reality has increasingly been seen as a catch-all solution to modern ills. Developed in the 1960s, the idea was pioneered by Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist who had studied as a psychoanalyst. He called it cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and based it on the idea that people suffer from emotional problems because of distortions in thinking.

It has proved effective in treating depression, anxiety, stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. But psychologists say prisoners offend for a variety of reasons including drugs and lack of job skills rather than deep-rooted psychological problems. In addition, CBT in prison tends to be done in groups rather than individually.

Colin Gill, a psychologist who works with criminals, said: “Work has been done which shows that many prisoners know what outcomes they are supposed to display to these courses. They know how to play the system to make it seem as if they’ve changed.”

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