Although it uses MI principles in its technique, the stages of change model is still important in motivating behaviour change. there are five stages in total: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenence, and while the aim is to get an offender through each stage, it is not a linear process, and they can regress back into any of the earlier stages at any time. the precontemplation stage is the start of an offenders journey, where they see nothing wrong with their actions and no reason to change. after discussion with a practitioner, they may enter the contemplation phase, where they become aware there might be a problem, and start paying more attention to why the practitioner is suggesting they might change, using MI principles. The third stage is preparation, where they are going to change but they dont have a specific plan laid out, and once they have a plan and implement the change to modify their behaviour, then they are in the action stage. After six months in the action stage, they enter the maintenence stage, but there is no guarantee they will stay there. MI techniques are used throughout the stages, to encourage them to make a plan and eventually carry it out, but they cannot be forced to change. While self-efficacy is still being used in these stages, there is also an important focus on what is appropriate to encourage the offender to do at each indivdiual stage, which is just as important as self-efficacy in motivating change.
There is evidence to support the stages of change model works, from Alexander and Morris (2008), who found that those assessed to be in the later stages of change showed greater improvement on behavioural change measures such as depression, anxiety and anger management scores than those in the earlier stages of change. However, these measures were all self reported, so there is a vulnerability to potential biases if they were familiar with the model. Casey et al (2005) also says that the model is designed for explaining frequent behaviours, such as smoking or alcohol abuse, therefore its application to rare offending behaviours may be limited and MI principles may be more important to changing behaviour.