Appendix B: Participants Information and Consent Form

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"Finding out more about risk factors and treatment needs for youth offenders"

Participants Information and Consent Form

Researcher contact details:
Nick Wilson
Senior Advisor Research
Corrections, Psychological Service
P O Box 19 003 Hamilton
Phone (07) 834 7086

The Corrections Department has started a research project to gain more information about the youth offenders who are currently imprisoned in the Young Offender Units. The department needs to know more about the risk factors and treatment needs of youth offenders in order to ensure that those who are highest risk of reoffending have their treatment needs met. While it is possible to collect information from official records and Corrections staff these do not tell the whole story and it is important that individuals such as yourself are interviewed to gain from your experience and beliefs.

Participation will be entirely voluntary and all information that you provide will be treated as strictly confidential.

The information we get from your interview and a review of your file will be used to provide information to the Corrections Department of New Zealand about what helps to reduce the risk of reoffending for offenders with high risk/needs. The research study has been approved by the Public Prison Service and Waikato Bay of Plenty Regional Prison. Contact about this research can be made with the Project Manager, Nick Wilson, Senior Advisor Research or with your Unit Manager, who is fully informed about the project.

It is expected that the interview will take approximately one and a half hours of your time. Nick Wilson, or the other researcher involved in the project, Rehina Rolleston, both Clinical Psychologists employed by Corrections Psychological Service will ask you a series of questions about the following areas:

  • Background information on school behaviour,
  • Family background, growing up;
  • Antisocial behaviour;
  • How you relate to others, both family and peers;
  • Employment and social history;
  • Emotions (self report on your mood, any anxiety, down moods, stress, alcohol and drug use);
  • Attitudes to crime and the future.

Your name will not be used to record the information you provide. Instead only a number will identify any information you give during interview or on questionnaires. All personal information that you give will not be told to anyone so nobody can know that what you wrote or said came from you. No information that would identify you will be published or made available to Corrections Department staff, or anyone else. There is no (deception) tricks involved in this study.

There is one only situation when information about you may be reported and that is if you reported that you intended to harm yourself or someone else. In that case we may have to pass that information on to make sure no one is hurt.

Doing this interview is strictly voluntary (that is you only do it if you want to) and will have no effect, good or bad, on any aspect of your interactions with the Department of Corrections. A small Koha or gift will be provided, not as a reward for taking part but rather as a small recognition of the time and inconvenience for you in taking part in the interview process.

You are free to withdraw from the interview at any time without penalty of any kind!

Consent

Signing this form before the start of the interview provides permission for the researchers from Corrections Psychological Service to conduct an interview to gather information to assist others viewed as having high risk/treatment needs. I understand that I may decide not to go ahead with the interview and there will be no questioning of my actions.

I ________________________________ have read (or have had read to me) and understand the above and agree to take part in this study.

Participants'signature:_____________________________

Date:____________