Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a therapeutic approach to deal with resistance to change, facilitating behavioral change, and promoting motivation to change, widely used in psychology and counselling. As motivation to change is an indicator associated with treatment engagement and success, MI is being increasingly applied to forensic settings, where individuals are often coerced into treatment. MI has been used in forensic practice to promote individuals’ engagement in the supervision and in the intervention/rehabilitation process, and to elicit and explore the individuals’ own motivations regarding change goals related to relevant criminal risk factors. The growing interest in MI use with justice-involved individuals has been mainly due to its proved efficacy.

Justice-related institutions worldwide, such as correctional agencies, prisons, community services/agencies or forensic hospitals, influenced positively the behavioral trajectories of the individuals with whom they work/deal, more than just control or sanction them. However, prison sentences and harsh offender policies are still the global norm and justice-involved individuals are often coerced into treatment, imposing additional challenges to practitioners to move individuals toward change in the most criminally relevant life areas. Working with justice-involved individuals implies the use of several skills and techniques, such as MI, along with other risk reduction strategies. MI has several advantages in justice settings: it is an effective evidence-based technique, promoting treatment compliance and adherence, preparing individuals to change, allowing to handle the resistance to change.

This Research Topic aims to explore the use of MI within forensic contexts (i.e., adult and youth offenders’ rehabilitation; drug abuse; alcohol abuse; offenders with mental disorders; female offenders), describing the main practices, outcomes/efficacy, and challenges of MI with justice-involved clients. It is the editors’ aim to better understand whether MI increases motivation to change, readiness to change, treatment adherence and treatment efficacy. It is also our intent to address case studies and empirical studies, testing the efficacy of interventions using MI, and systematic reviews and meta-analytic studies, assessing the effectiveness of interventions using MI.
The authors are encouraged to address submissions related to, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Efficacy of intervention programs using MI;
- MI and offenders’ rehabilitation;
- MI and the treatment of resistant to change individuals;
- MI and substance abuse treatment among justice-involved individuals;
- MI techniques in forensic mental health agencies;
- Randomized Control Trials using MI.

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Frontiers in Psychology

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