In today’s society aggression and violence are feared and try to be prevented one way or another. This can be tackled most effectively if we know, what triggers aggression. Psychological theories of aggressive behaviour list as causes internal factors, external factors or their mutual influence.
Each theory focuses mostly on one of the causes; however aggressive behaviour can be in its entirety explained only by considering all causes. An individual is a constitution of body, soul and spirit and it would be impossible to a priori exclude the effect of thoughts or emotions on one’s behaviour. Understanding what causes aggressive behaviour can help us work professionally with those, who had behaved aggressively in their past and had been even convicted for it, but we want to prevent recidivism or the repetition of their aggressive behaviour. Psychological tests to predict recidivism can help at that, as they are mainly used to predict with high accuracy which offenders will repeat violent criminal act. Until now Slovenia has not been paying attention to predicting recidivism, but this year the Probation Act has been adopted, which, among other things, states that the Board of Republic of Slovenia for probation must treat professionally every person included in probation. That includes help in identifying causes, which influenced criminal acts, and in preventing them, help in solving personal distress and problems, help in arranging living conditions and establishing acceptable forms of behaviour. In order to prepare personal plans or make a report for court, public prosecutor or parole committee, the probation unit should make a risk and need assessment for professional treatment in order to make inclusion in society more successful, which points to a future enforcement of psychological tests to predict recidivism also in our country.
|
