To understand global approaches to supporting rehabilitation for cognitively impaired offenders

Significant progress has been made in Australia to implement the Risk Needs Responsivity and other therapeutic approaches to offender rehabilitation practices. However, Australian recidivism rates remain high, particularly when compared to recidivism rates in many European countries. It is also understood that Australia also has an over-representation of people demonstrating cognitive impairments accommodated within our prison systems, and that these underlying impairments may act as a barrier to successful engagement in rehabilitation programs. Given that the over-representation of people demonstrating cognitive impairments is also common in European countries, this project aimed to identify approaches utilised in European prison systems to identify and respond to the needs of people demonstrating cognitive impairments in the context of offender rehabilitation.