I heard a lecture by an advocate of forgiveness interventions in which he claimed that helping prisoners to forgive could help them. Is this some kind of joke? These people are in prison because of their harm to others. Why should we then help them to forgive others after all the chaos they have caused?
We did a study with men in a maximum-security correctional institution, and about 90% of them suffered from serious injustices against them when they were young. This is not at all to excuse their crimes because we all have many free-will options when we are very angry. Yet, we hypothesized that if we can reduce their hatred, then they may be better citizens within the correctional institution, improve in their mental health, and possibly be more open to traditional rehabilitation approaches in the correctional system. We did a randomized experimental and control group study with the experimental group going through a forgiveness intervention and the control group going through the hand-picked rehabilitation program from the institution. Results showed that those who had the forgiveness intervention went from clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to normal levels. The control group participants remained clinically angry, anxious, and depressed. Yet, when these participants then had the six-month forgiveness program, they, too, reached normal levels of anger, anxiety, and depression. Following the forgiveness intervention, some of the participants went to medium-security corrections because they were seen as less of a threat for violence.
Here is a reference to this work:
Yu, L., Gambaro, M., Song, J., Teslik, M., Song, M., Komoski, M.C., Wollner, B., & Enright, R.D.
(2021). Forgiveness therapy in a maximum-security correctional institution: A randomized clinical trial. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 28, 1457-1471.
