Hyderabad: The distinct factors found common in most habitual offenders are alcohol, a feeling that they could help other people and a sense of outsmarting the police at their own game.
This was stated by Dr Beena Chintalapuri, a retired psychology professor at Osmania University, who counsels and conducts cognitive and behavioural skill-based programmes in jails.
She said that several reformed convicts come to share their stories and talk to time-serving prisoners.
She is one among several psychologists who counsel and conduct sessions for prisoners serving time at Chanchalguda and Cherlapally jails. Unnati, a programme aimed at reformation of prisoners, and which is sponsored by Antrix-ISRO, has been attracting good response for the last seven years, prison officials said.
Dr Chintalapuri said “There are plenty of prisoners who choose not to return to crime. We spend time with them, train and talk to them about how they can reflect on their acts and make amends. We conduct a lot of group activities apart from individual activities to help them. Rather than a u-turn, we teach them to take a z-turn. A lot of effort and planning goes behind these programs,” she said.
“Basically there is a gap in the thinking, which we all have. It's just that there are people who react to instincts and some who don’t. Such groups are also victims of society and peer groups, wherein they reach a critical point and become helpless,” she added.
