Lesson 4.3.9.4

4.3.9.4 Dealing with offending behaviour Quiz: AQA Psychology, Unit 3

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.3.9.4, Dealing with offending behaviour: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA Psychology (7182), Unit 3: Issues and options in Psychology, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which is an aim of custodial sentencing that seeks to stop offenders from committing crimes by removing them from society?

    • Incapacitation
    • Anger management
    • Covert sensitisation
    • Restorative justice

  2. Which aim of sentencing focuses on discouraging others by making an example of an offender?

    • General deterrence
    • Reparation to the victim
    • Individual retribution only
    • Rehabilitation

  3. What is the psychological effect of custodial sentencing sometimes described as prisonisation?

    • Developing a strong preference for solitary activity in open spaces outside prison
    • Adopting the norms, values and behaviours of the prison subculture
    • Becoming immune to all forms of stress regardless of environment
    • Losing all memory of the offence committed before entering prison

  4. Which psychological effect of imprisonment is linked to a loss of personal control and autonomy?

    • Neophobia, in which prisoners become afraid of new foods served
    • Taste aversion, in which prisoners avoid foods they have eaten in prison
    • Desensitisation, in which prisoners become less upset by violence on television
    • Learned helplessness, in which prisoners come to feel they cannot control outcomes

  5. What is behaviour modification in custody?

    • A system of rewards and punishments, such as a token economy, used to encourage desired behaviour
    • A method that relies on removing all rewards so that prisoners lose all motivation
    • A method that uses electric shocks to suppress any behaviour the staff dislike
    • A method that involves prisoners voting on the rules that apply to the whole wing

  6. What is the aim of an anger management programme for offenders?

    • To punish offenders by making them feel more anger about their situation
    • To remove all emotion from offenders so they feel nothing about their crimes
    • To increase the level of anger so that offenders become more assertive in prison
    • To teach people to recognise triggers of anger and use strategies to control their responses

  7. What is restorative justice?

    • A process in which offenders are placed in solitary confinement for the length of the sentence
    • A process in which victims are excluded from all decisions about the offender's sentence
    • A process in which offenders meet victims or communities to understand harm and make amends
    • A process in which offenders are sentenced to hard labour without any contact with victims

  8. Which evaluation point applies to custodial sentencing as a way of reducing offending?

    • Prison has no effect on offending because offenders never think about their sentence
    • Prison always reduces reoffending to zero for every offender in every system
    • Prison can increase reoffending through negative effects on relationships, employment and identity
    • Prison has been shown to reduce reoffending more than any other intervention in every study

  9. Which evaluation point applies to behaviour modification programmes in prisons?

    • Behaviour modification is always permanent, with no return to old habits after release
    • Behaviour may change while the programme operates but may not persist once rewards are removed
    • Behaviour modification has no effect on behaviour under any circumstances
    • Behaviour modification has been shown to be harmful to every prisoner who takes part

  10. A prisoner receives points for completing tasks, which can be exchanged for privileges. Which technique is being used?

    • A token economy, a form of behaviour modification
    • Restorative justice, using face-to-face meetings with victims
    • Covert sensitisation, using imagery to associate offending with nausea
    • Cognitive restructuring, using debate to challenge moral reasoning

  11. Which aim of sentencing is most directly served by an offender making reparation to a victim?

    • Deterrence, which focuses on preventing others from offending
    • Retribution, which focuses on punishing the offender for the offence
    • Reparation, which focuses on repairing the harm caused by an offence
    • Incapacitation, which focuses on removing the offender from society

  12. Which psychological effect of custody is linked to stress and loss of identity?

    • Cognitive priming, in which the inmate thinks of aggression after exposure to a stimulus
    • Prisonisation, in which the inmate adopts prison values and loses connection with their former identity
    • Desensitisation, in which the inmate becomes less affected by violence on screen
    • Neophobia, in which the inmate fears trying unfamiliar foods served in prison

  13. Why might a rehabilitative aim be preferred to a purely punitive aim in sentencing?

    • Rehabilitation aims to increase the time served in custody for all offenders in every case
    • Rehabilitation aims to reduce reoffending by addressing the causes of offending, not just punishing the offence
    • Rehabilitation aims to avoid all contact between offenders and any form of treatment
    • Rehabilitation aims to remove the offender's right to a trial before sentencing

  14. A prison introduces a programme in which offenders learn to identify anger triggers and practise calmer responses. Which approach does this most closely match?

    • Incapacitation, which removes the offender from society for a set period
    • Anger management, which teaches control over emotional responses
    • Covert sensitisation, which pairs offending with an aversive image
    • Token economy, which reinforces behaviour with points

  15. Which statement about custodial sentencing is most accurate?

    • Its only aim is rehabilitation, and no punishment is ever involved in any sentence, so prisons function only as places of education
    • Its only aim is retribution, and no other aim has ever been considered in any system, so it is simply a way of punishing wrongdoing
    • Its aims include retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and reparation, which can conflict with each other
    • Its only aim is reparation, and offenders never serve any time in prison, because the victim decides the length of the sentence each time

  16. Which evaluation point applies to restorative justice?

    • It is always successful for every victim and every offender in every case
    • It has been shown to have no effect on offenders or victims in any published study
    • It may be unsuitable for some victims and offences, and its success depends on willing participation
    • It is only used for offences that have never caused any harm to a person

  17. A researcher wants to test whether a prison programme reduces reoffending. Which design is most appropriate?

    • A single case study of one offender's experience during a sentence, written up in detail from interviews held over several months at the prison
    • A survey of prison staff's opinions about the programme's usefulness, collected through a questionnaire sent to every officer on the wing
    • A correlation between the length of sentence and the colour of the cell, measured across many prisons in different parts of the country
    • A longitudinal study comparing reoffending rates of programme participants and a matched comparison group

  18. Which finding would challenge the claim that custodial sentences always reduce reoffending?

    • Offenders given custody reoffend at a lower rate than similar offenders given community sentences
    • Offenders given custody reoffend at a higher rate than similar offenders given community sentences
    • Offenders' reoffending rates are unrelated to the type of sentence they receive in any study
    • Offenders' reoffending rates vary only with the colour of the cell in which they were held

  19. Which programme style would most directly teach offenders to recognise and interrupt their own angry thinking?

    • A cognitive-behavioural anger management course with role play and practice of calmer responses
    • A programme of unpaid community work that involves no reflection on the offender's own thinking
    • A programme of solitary confinement with no contact with other prisoners or staff at any time
    • A programme of fixed-term detention with weekly fines paid to the local community each month

  20. A prison wing introduces daily work and education, and reoffending falls. Which evaluation is most appropriate?

    • The fall is meaningless, since reoffending rates cannot be measured reliably in any prison setting
    • The change is consistent with rehabilitation, but other changes over the same period could explain part of the fall
    • The fall shows that rehabilitation has no effect, since reoffending always falls for other reasons
    • The fall proves that work and education are the only causes of reduced reoffending in any prison

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