Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Over the last 30 years in the USA, an innovative and promising type of intervention programme has grown increasingly popular. Offender-led dog-training programmes (DTPs) use offenders (or at-risk youths) to train dogs to work as service animals or to improve the dogs’ chances of being adopted. In 1981, Sister Pauline Quinn and Dr Leo Bustad, a pioneer of human-animal interaction research, founded the first prison-based DTP at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Subsequently, prison-based DTPs have been established in all 50 states in the USA and several countries (e.g. Canada, Italy, and Australia).
DTPs differ in implementation practice on a programme-by-programme basis. DTPs source their dogs from various venues; some programmes (e.g. Puppies Behind Bars) use specially bred golden retriever puppies while others (e.g. Safe Harbor Prison Dogs) use “death row dogs” who are scheduled to be destroyed at an animal shelter. DTPs also vary by participant admittance criteria; interviews, psychological tests, criminal history, history with animals, length of sentence remaining, and behaviour records while incarcerated may all be used to screen programme participants. Participation in DTPs is not always limited to the most well-behaved and least risky offenders; for example, a DTP in Susanville, California uses offenders with behaviour problems in an effort to encourage prosocial behaviour and Project Second Chance in New Mexico sometimes uses juveniles who have histories of animal abuse or dog-fighting (Lai, 1998). These variations can be an obstacle in evaluating these programmes, but it is possibly the flexibility of DTPs that make them so popular.
Despite the popularity of DTPs, there is a lack of empirical research and evaluations of these programmes. If more were known about their effects, both desirable and undesirable, programme coordinators could improve their programme operation and DTPs might become more widely and internationally implemented. In this paper, we will analyse the existing research on DTPs to establish what are the perceived benefits of DTPs and to expand on this research by examining the implications of these benefits. Furthermore, in an effort to replicate the findings of past research and to better understand these perceived benefits, the present study surveyed a variety of people involved in DTPs to gauge their perception of their benefits and consequences including those cited in the extant literature....