Cognitive Self Change is a cognitive-behavioral treatment program for criminal and violent
offenders. It is based on the idea that offending behavior is grounded in ways of thinking that
excuse and justify that behavior.
Cognitive Self Change teaches offenders how to break free of the attitudes and habits of thinking
that lead them to offend. With young offenders, this means breaking free of influences that
threaten to lead them into a lifetime of crime and violence.
Offenders learn to change their thinking by performing four simple steps:
Step 1: Pay attention to your thoughts and feelings.
Offenders give brief, objective reports of their thoughts and feelings when they
committed criminal and violent acts. (These are called, “Thinking Reports.”)
Step 2:Recognize how your thoughts and feelings lead you to offend.
Offenders learn to see for themselves the direct connection between how they
think and how they act.
Step 3: Imagine new ways to think that would let you feel good about yourself without doing acts of crime or violence.
Offenders learn to see non-criminal ways of living as a personal and genuine
possibility.
Step 4: Practice using these new ways of thinking until you get good at it.
Using new thinking in real-life situations—and making it work—is the final step in
learning how to steer the course of your own life.
The steps of CSC are taught as skills. CSC does not coerce offenders to “obey the rules,” and it is
not a “cure” for some imagined “disease.” It teaches offenders how to change themselves.
