Question: what gives you motivation to pursue your job?

Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:

Such an important question – if you can do a job that motivates you, life is a lot more fun – we spend such a lot of our time at work.

So no one dreams of being in prison when they grow up – it’s not ever part of a careers goal or flight path – the people I work with are people for whom something has gone a bit wrong and taken them off course (and in doing so there is a victim of their crime as well). So finding ways to get people back on track, i.e. not come back to prison, is a great motivation – it also means that our society will be a bit safer. Actually, most people in prison work their way back ‘on track’ without the help of a psychologist – so the people that I see are often the people who are struggling to do this on their own. For these people we need to use the research that has been carried out to design a plan. Forensic psychologists use science and research about how to change criminal behaviour when they design these plans.

One of my favourite jobs was working on a unit with men who had spent many years in prison, had done a great deal of changing (often through therapy), and were about to be released. When they told me about the people that they used to be it was really hard to imagine – they had generally changed so much. I often use that experience to remind me that people can make enormous changes, but that this might take many years for someone to do.