Table 2 Possible Cognitive Distortions of Prison Officers regarding NSPs
From: Moving beyond non-engagement on regulated needle-syringe exchange programs in Australian prisons
Distortion | In this situation... | |
|---|---|---|
All-or-nothing | Seeing things in black and white (absolute) categories | "Prisons should aim to be drug-free or should just give up" |
Over-generalisation | Seeing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat | "Because of what happened to Geoff Pearce, all needles are unsafe/infected" |
Mental filter | Picking out a single negative detail and dwelling on it to the exclusion of other details | "It doesn't matter that Geoff Pearce was stabbed in a prison without a regulated NSP, what matters is that he was stabbed and later died". |
Disqualifying the positive | Rejecting positive experiences by insisting they don't count | "Positive experiences in Europe don't count – things are different there" |
Jumping to conclusions | Mind reading, fortune telling, etc. | "Trialling an NSP will promote drug use" |
Minimisation | Shrinking the importance of things inappropriately | "It doesn't matter that we will be able to control previously uncontrolled contraband" |
Emotional reasoning | Thinking that negative emotions reflect the way that things really are. | "The idea of a prison-based NSP makes me feel unsafe, therefore it must be unsafe". |