Trauma and Offending

Overview

This unit provides students with a broad understanding of how various forms of trauma impact on functioning and contribute to maladaptive behaviour. The unit will enable students to recognise the role that trauma presentations can play with clients in the forensic context, to critically evaluate the contribution of trauma to offending behaviour in individual cases, and to adapt therapeutic and correctional interventions where necessary to take account of the impact of trauma on clients.

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1. Evaluate the antecedents of a traumatic response and how to recognise such responses in forensic clients.
2. Analyse the differences and overlap between trauma-focused interventions and trauma-informed care (TIC) practices, and the relevance of each to forensic clients.
3. Examine the role of trauma in First Nations people who engage in offending behaviours.
4. Summarise and critique common theories linking trauma to offending behaviours, including the specific vulnerability factors associated with these theories.
5. Debate how the judicial and correctional systems should respond to trauma among people with offending behaviour.

Teaching methods

Hawthorn 

Assessment

Content

• Defining trauma
• The impact of different types of traumatic experiences on physical, social and emotional well being
• Critiquing evidence-based approaches to trauma treatment
• Trauma and the forensic system
• Evaluation of the most influential theories linking trauma to offending
• An overview of the limitations of research into the nature of the relationship between trauma and offending