When former Paradise High School teacher Delmar Hughes was sentenced to 120 days in jail and three years of probation for felony burglary, he was also ordered to take a theft awareness class.

Hughes had been found guilty of one count of felony burglary for entering the PHS office after midnight back in November 2008 where he attempted to open a safe where cash was stored. He was acquitted of three other counts related to the disappearance of nearly $6,000 from the same safe. While there were mixed reactions about the sentence Hughes received, the requirement to complete a theft awareness program raised questions among community members and many readers. With so many bank robbery sprees, store burglaries and shoplifting cases these days, it seems many people could use a theft awareness course. Trained counselor Paul Lee of Solutions for Positive Choices teaches a theft awareness class in Chico and he explained the concepts and the goals of his program.

"It's cognitive restructuring," Lee said.

Participants learn the pattern of thinking and behavior they go through before, during and after the act of theft. The class teaches students to become aware of their "cops and robbers thinking" and take steps to change. Another major component to the class is focused on the victims. Lee said he tries to help his clients identify with the victims and learn sensitivity about the impact theft has on the people being hurt.

"I try to help them think of who is being impacted

by the crime," he said.

Some clients will tell him they don't steal from people; they steal from stores or corporations. But the truth, he said, is that other people are impacted. He tries to help his clients truly understand why it is wrong to steal. Lee has a master's degree in counseling. He teaches the theft awareness class with one other trained therapist every other month, on a weekend day for about four hours.

"It's a brief intervention," he said.

He has been teaching the class since June of 2003 when he was asked by the Butte County Probation Department to design a program for people convicted of theft or burglary. The curriculum Lee uses comes from "The Psychology of Stealing: The Truth about Why People Steal" by Steven Houseworth, MA. He covers "cops and robbers thinking," and "mental rehearsing,"- both of which are thinking processes people go through with the mentality to steal. He covers what is called the "license to steal," or the reasons and rationalizations people tell themselves to avoid the guilt and helps his students understand why it's wrong to steal and the hurt it causes the victims. Finally, he helps them reach resolutions by recognizing the mentality and thought process of people who steal, and teaches techniques to stop that way of thinking.

His clients include a wide-range of offenders from shoplifters to embezzlers to recovering addicts. Some are more dangerous than others, he said. However, the class is not designed for dangerous criminals. The more willing someone is to go right up to a person and steal from them, the more dangerous they are. For instance, a criminal who will go into someone's home to steal even while there are people inside is considered more dangerous than someone who does not approach people to steal. Dangerous criminals like this are unlikely to gain much from a four-hour class. They need more extensive therapy and probably some time behind bars as well, Lee said.

Most of his clients are nonviolent offenders and they are like most people in society. They have children, interests, hobbies, jobs they are stressed about or they are stressed out as they look for work. Lee works with his client to help them first understand the "cops and robbers thinking.' Houseworth's book defines the "cops and robbers" thinking as a thought process a person goes through to increase the odds of not getting caught. This includes scanning the room or area, determining how to conceal an item or hide the fact that it's being stolen, they consider the timing, their get-away plan and the act itself. Some people claim they never intended to steal - that it just happened, Lee said. But if they examine their behavior before hand, they can realize that they were scanning the place to determine if they might be able to get away with stealing. If they are caught, they think "What did I do wrong how did I get caught?" Lee said.

People don't steal knowing they are going to get caught, Houseworth says in his book. Their thinking, "the cops and robbers thinking," is about how to get away with the crime. Even if the crime is opportunistic and impulsive, cops and robbers thinking comes into play whether it takes a moment or a few days to plan and process. Cops and robbers thinking begins the second the opportunity and the thought of stealing something enters a person's mind, Houseworth says. He has a common saying to his clients.

"If you stole, you did cops and robbers thinking," Houseworth writes.

Mental rehearsing is when a person is thinking about stealing, but they are not actually doing it, Lee said. For example, two people could be walking down a street and see a car parked with the keys in the ignition. They both might think, "That car would be really easy to steal," but one would go on with his day, and the other would keep thinking about how easy it would have been to steal that car. For many people, the thought of stealing a car is abhorrent, Lee said. But for a person who steals, it's not an abhorrent thought. Houseworth writes in his book that several of his clients struggled with constant thoughts of stealing, though they would not act on their thoughts. He says pondering the act of stealing often enough allows the person to desensitize himself and mentally prepare to act when the opportunity comes along. A primary obstacle for counselors, Houseworth says, is that most theft offenders have systematically desensitized themselves to how abnormal the thought of stealing is, and the wrongness of stealing. They allow themselves to think about theft. And everyone who steals has given themselves a mental "license to steal" Lee said. During the four-hour class, Lee asks each student to talk about their experience and define their own "license." The license is a means to avoid guilt by rationalizing the behavior, he said.

Embezzlers might rationalize that it's only fair to take a little extra if they haven't received a raise. Someone might think "Well, I need this, or my children need this," or they might rationalize that they are not stealing from a person, they are stealing from a corporation. Anger, peer pressure, desperation and need can also be someone's "license." One underlying theme is entitlement, Lee said. Entitlement is a big reason why people steal, and their license to steal helps them avoid feelings of guilt. Though many offenders know and believe it is wrong to steal, Houseworth writes, they will simultaneously have conflicting beliefs that allow for an "exception to the rule." Licenses are thinking errors, he says. They are inaccurate beliefs allowing an exception to the rule, or permission to steal. After defining each person's "license," Lee then guides them through a discussion of why stealing is wrong. If a person's reason for not stealing is fear of punishment, they will steal again, he said. The fear might work for awhile, but they will get over it and steal again.

In Houseworth's book, he said fear of punishment may prevent stealing behavior, but the thinking process geared toward stealing doesn't change. If someone thinks he can steal and not get caught and thus not get punished, he will likely steal again.

"So what's missing?" Lee asked. "Why is it wrong to steal?"

When he asks participants that question, Lee said he finds a lot of "circular thinking." They might say stealing is immoral, or it's wrong, or that the bible says it's wrong, their parents say it's wrong, or society says it's wrong.

"But why?" Lee asked. "Why is it wrong?"

Why would it be written as wrong in religious teachings and government law and taught as something that is wrong by parents and society, he asks. The basic reason is that it hurts others, he said. He asks the participants to consider the hurt it causes victims and try to identify with and empathize with the victim. They discuss whether they have ever been stolen from to realize the pain and the hurt, he said.

"A central goal of theft counseling is to provide a face," Houseworth writes.

This humanizes every theft, whether it's from a person or a store or a corporation. Participants have to realize that stealing always hurts people, he says. If they are able to empathize with the emotional and financial injury stealing causes others, they will be less likely to steal. Lee said his class takes a good look at the impact stealing has had on others. Learning to emphasize with the victims requires tapping into the value system of each participant, he said.

"We need to become more sensitive as to what is stealing," he said.

Theft offenders are not the only ones who struggle with this. For example, the cashier at the store might give someone too much change.

"Do you give it back, or do you keep it?" he asked.

Keeping it would be stealing, but the customer might give himself a "license" by saying, "well I paid too much anyway," Lee said. But there are victims. The cashier will be the one paying for it at the end of the day. According to Houseworth, knowing that stealing hurts other people will not be a deterrent to stealing unless the person cares about others enough to not hurt them.

Finally, Lee talks about resolutions and changes with the class. When his students can recognize the cops and robbers thinking, the mental rehearsing, and identify their "license to steal" they will be better able understand that they are in "dangerous territory" and halt that kind of thinking.

It's especially important to identify the license to steal, he said. "A license or an excuse might sound good at the time, but it's really stupid thinking," he said. "It's not logical."

And by identifying that kind of thinking is wrong, he hopes class' participants will see that the wrong thinking is what got them into trouble in the first place. By stopping the license, they can often stop the stealing and the harm it causes, he said. One young man in Lee's class had been raised to steal. Lee said the man's father was a thief and he taught his children to steal. It was the way this young man had been raised. But he decided to take Lee's course because he had a little boy and he didn't want to do the same thing his father did. Lee said this student seemed to do very well. Another client was a woman who would go to stores and walk off with things as though she owned them. She would go to Home Depot and just walk off with a grill, like it was hers, Lee said.

Another shoplifter would go into store, examine items and then go up to the cashier to check the price. When she later walked out of the store with the item, the security surveillance would make it seem like she had already paid.

"They all have their MO's," Lee said. "One thing I have to watch out for is people learning from each other. I don't want it to be like a prison mentality."

However, Lee said he finds that many of the people he counsels do have strong values, they believe stealing is wrong and they want to do the right thing. He described his class as a combination of group therapy and education. As they share their experiences and learn, Lee hopes to help them change their way of thinking. Though the four-hour class is only a "brief intervention," Lee hopes the participants can take something away from it and that it will help them be more sensitive to their way of thinking.