Pioneering research leading to the first effective treatment for deliberate firesetters has seen a team from the University win a national award for outstanding impact in society.
Professor Theresa Gannon and her team in the School of Psychology devised a ground-breaking programme that means offenders are 3.5 times more likely to reduce their interest in starting fires deliberately following treatment.
Their research leading to the new treatment programme secured the team a £10,000 award for Outstanding Impact in Society in the 2016 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Celebrating Impact Prize, presented at a London awards ceremony on 22 June.
The ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize, recognises and rewards the successes of ESRC-funded researchers who have achieved, or are currently achieving, outstanding economic and societal impacts. Praising the work of Professor Gannon and her team, the judging panel pointed to ‘compelling evidence’ that this research has made a ‘strong impact on both users and wider society by setting up a standardised and effective treatment programme that helps firesetters alter their behaviour and meets a need not previously addressed’.
Professor Gannon’s new Multi-Trajectory Theory of Adult Firesetting, which for the first time includes women as well as men, identifies that firesetters are a psychologically distinctive group that require specialist treatment to target their unique needs. Based on five offender subtypes of behaviour, researchers devised a six-month treatment programme. They also developed two treatment manuals for prison and mentally ill firesetters and training for more than 450 UK based professionals who are now offering treatment nationally across more than 33 UK hospitals and prisons.
During the six-month treatment programme, professionals now develop an ‘offence chain’ that acts as an early warning system to help the offender act differently in future. The programme also tackles issues including anger management, fire safety awareness and attitudes towards firesetting.
The treatment programme now plays a central role in the care, sentence planning and discharge, and parole decisions of the 150 UK firesetters who have completed the programme to date. More convicted firesetters are now meeting criteria for release or transfer to less secure establishments.