how big a change have you seen in prisoners when working with them, or are they difficult to help

Question: how big a change have you seen in prisoners when working with them, or are they difficult to help
- Keywords:
  change,
  difficult,
  help,
  prisoner
Asked by anon-179127 to John on 18 Jun 2018.
- John Atkinson answered on 18 Jun 2018:
  
  Hi Louis,
  Good question. It very much depends on the person. In my experience a lot of things have to be ‘right’ for the person to really change and you have to be able to get on with them to influence change. Sometimes due to personality differences it can be difficult. However, I have worked with some people who have made some great changes and managed to get discharged from hospital to their own flats etc after being detained for years. Some of them have committed some very serious crimes so to get to the point where they can manage themselves safely and they are back in the community is huge. This often takes years of work with psychology and their teams in hospital however, it is not easy!
  Internal motivation is very important, if I asked you to change something you really did not want to, you probably wouldn’t bother. ‘You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’

Question: how big a change have you seen in prisoners when working with them, or are they difficult to help