Let’s Take the Stigma Out of Employing People with a History of Behavioral Issues

Employment can be an important re-entry method and strong protective factor for people who have committed an offense or with a history of behavior issues. Yet many employers are unwilling to hire these individuals. By increasing employers’ understanding, we can promote inclusive hiring and healthy workplaces.

This webinar features an open dialogue with Working Fields, a staffing agency that specializes in helping people eliminate barriers to employment. We will discuss hiring people with past behavioral issues, address common misconceptions, and tackle questions from Working Fields employer partners.

Do Sanctions Affect Undetected Sexual Offending?

Not every sex crime is reported to authorities. This simple fact has caused considerable fear in society, leading to questions about how much we really know about sexual abuse and those who perpetrate it. For those researching sex crimes, it becomes even more complicated: the rate of actual offending (both detected and undetected) appears to vary widely depending on who is being studied, how undetected sexual offending is defined, and how undetected sexual offenses are measured.

Building Hope and Motivation with Suicidal Clients in Criminal Justice

Working with justice-involved adults brings many challenges, among which are assessing the likelihood of future harmful acts and forming trusting relationships with clients in order to help them become productive members of society. One challenge that is often overlooked by those working with justice-involved clients is understanding and intervening when clients become suic

Self-Care for Practitioners

A recent article published by the APA highlights the pressure that psychologists face from increased workload. Global and local issues, as well as the aftermath of the pandemic, have affected professionals and clients alike. Professionals are providing services to disenfranchised people and populations while enduring unprecedented stressors.  

Join Safer Society for a training on practicing self-care. This workshop begins with the recent literature and results from surveys in 2020 and 2023 examining the impact of the pandemic and self-care among people working with justice-involved clients. Discussion follows, including the emotional, physical, and

Applying Circles of Support and Accountability with People Who Access Child Sexual Exploitation Material

Circles of Support & Accountability (CoSA) is a restorative justice-informed initiative intended to assist in the post-release community integration of persons with sexual offense histories after periods of incarceration or other detention. It uses community volunteers trained and supported by locally employed professionals and experts. Since its inception, CoSA has been consistently shown to significantly reduce harm while increasing the likelihood of successful integration of participants into the community. In September 2020, Circles UK launched an innovative new program, Circles ReBoot, which helps individuals who have accessed Child Sexual Exploitation Material, who are typically at high risk to persist in offending and who have high levels of treatment need.

Mindfulness Approaches For Promoting Wellbeing in Adolescents

This webinar presents ideas for integrating mindfulness and other brain-based approaches into the treatment of adolescents with histories of harmful behaviors. The ideas incorporate the rigor of science, the beauty of art, the wisdom of reflection, and years of clinical experience in this field. The presenter, Michelle Gourley, first became formally experienced with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in the wake of significant personal life events. This led her to explore how this approach, and others like it, can be used with the clients in her care.

We Have the Same Goals: Connecting Victim Service Advocates and Treatment Providers

Victim service advocates and treatment providers have the same goal–communities without sexual violence–but tend to operate in isolation from one another. This webinar starts out with acknowledging that public perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs too often prevent those who assess and treat people who have sexually abused from connecting with victim services. This divide can create a narrative about the work we do and what others think of it.

Harnessing Memory Reconsolidation for Treatment of Trauma

Can traumatic memories and patterns be changed so they no longer haunt a person emotionally? Neuroscience research suggests they can by harnessing the mechanism of memory reconsolidation, the brain’s own process of updating an emotional memory with new meanings and associations. In this webinar, Courtney Armstrong will discuss this exciting discovery and share a simple five-step protocol you can use in treatment to safely reconsolidate traumatic memories and create corrective emotional experiences that change the brain.

Compassion Focused Therapy in Forensic Practice: An Overview

Originally pioneered by Paul Gilbert in the UK, compassion focused therapy (CFT) is an integrated, multi-modal approach to treatment that draws from evolutionary, social, developmental, and Buddhist psychology as well as neuroscience. In this webinar, Drs. Hocken and Taylor will discuss CFT and how it can be helpful in working with clients in the criminal justice system.