Reply to “Withstanding ‘Friendly Fire’: A Frontline Reply to O'Hare”

I congratulate Clark for his spirited reply to my article Court-Ordered versus Voluntary Clients: Problem Differences and Readiness for Change" (July 1996, pp. 417-422). However, I wish he had focused more on the merits and shortcomings of the research rather than merely indulging his pique at selected observations regarding problems in therapeutic jurisprudence. Skipping the research only to engage in value-driven diatribe is too common in the social work field and usually does more harm than good. Let's revisit the results of the study: The relationship between referral source and readiness for change . . . demonstrates a definitive tendency for voluntary clients to express much more engagement in the change process but does not support the common sentiment that court-ordered clients are unable or unwilling to change. . . . Over one-quarter . . . of the court-ordered clients were either thinking about changing (contemplating), actively engaged in doing something about the problem (participating), or trying to maintain previous gains in dealing with a problem (maintaining). Overgeneralizing and stereotyping certain client groups . . . increases the risk, in this case, of underestimating the potential of some court-ordered clients to willingly work on their problems. (p. 420) I also included practice suggestions that can help clinicians constructively engage involuntary clients rather than dismiss them as hard to reach. Cynical? Pessimistic? Hardly. My research interest in social work with involuntary clients was inspired by the practice wisdom of many clinician colleagues who felt that court-ordered clients were not attractive candidates for psychotherapy. Over the course of my 15 years of experience with voluntary and involuntary clients, both children and adults (shoplifters, drug abusers, mentally ill people, sex offenders, and murderers, to name a few), in both public and private practice, I was the frequent and gracious recipient of these "cast-offs." My practice wisdom told me that voluntary versus involuntary is not a particularly telling factor with respect to readiness or potential for change. This observation lead to my research interest in this area. As I waded through the jumble of metaphors and misattributed quotes ("purity" and "cleansing" are apparently Clark's preoccupation, not mine), two themes emerged that echo current social work debates and are of deep concern to me: (1) the pattern of selectively attending only to evidence that supports one's contentions about practice effectiveness, avoiding (or suppressing) disconfirmatory evidence and failing to place positive findings in a broader policy context, and (2) the aggravation of a phony dichotomy between what frontline practitioners do versus what university-based colleagues do. To illustrate the first item, I refer to Clark's noncritical reference to Gendreau's (1996) optimistic conclusions about the efficacy of court-ordered treatments. Although Gendreau did a fine job of emphasizing the effectiveness of community-based behavioral approaches (which I wholeheartedly endorse and agree comport well with the strengths perspective), Harland (1996b), the editor of the volume that includes Gendreau's analysis, characterizes his assessment as "couched in terms of general principles, blending his interpretation of the published research results with more clinically-based - and . . . perhaps ideologically tinted judgments about what does and does not appear to reduce recidivism" (p. xvii). In the same volume, Cullen, Wright, and Applegate (1996) and Palmer (1996) were more equivocal in their conclusions about court-ordered treatments overall. In the context of the overall goals of therapeutic jurisprudence, Petersilia (1996) later concluded, "Corrections research, for the most part, remains badly flawed" (p. …