Cognitive Self Change

The Cognitive Self-Change Program (CSC) is a cognitive-behavioural intervention that aims to reduce violent and general reconviction in offenders with a pattern of antisocial behaviour and criminality.  


The program was originally developed by Jack Bush and has been running in the Vermont State Correctional Service since 1989.  The Vermont program runs both in prison and in the community.  Adaptations of this program have been developed in the UK, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and numerous states in the USA. It has been used with adults and juveniles of both genders, with particular forms of offending (violence, domestic violence, sexual offences) and with general offenders.


The program aims to reduce recidivism by changing offenders’ criminal thinking processes and individual patterns of antisocial thinking that lead them to crime.