Sex Offender Treatment Programs

Although the number of convicted sex offenders grew from 2,768 in 1990 to 3,875 in 1995, the rate of reported sexual offences generally declined in recent years. In 1997, the rate of reported sexual offences was 101 per 100,000 people, a massive decline from a high of 135 per 100,000 people in 1993. Furthermore, there is an increasing amount of research that supports the idea that sex offenders can be treated successfully to allow them to lead crime free lives upon release. For example, one recent meta-analysis found that, across several studies, 19% of treated sex offenders and 27% of untreated sex offenders sexually recidivated. Given research such as this and the experience of the John Howard Society in working with sex offenders, the rest of this paper rests on the presumption that sex offenders are treatable and treatment programs do work. The question is: How can sex offenders be treated most effectively? Overall, research has found that sexual recidivism for all sex offenders is quite low, with rates of only 10% to 15% five years after release. Also, research has found that sex offenders can be categorized into three groups that have different recidivism rates and, thereby, require different treatments. These groups are incest child molesters who victimize related children, rapists who victimize adult women and non-incest child molesters who victimize unrelated children. Incest child molesters were found to sexually recidivate at the lowest rate at 8.4%. Since this rate was so low, it has traditionally been believed that, comparatively, incest child molesters require minimally intrusive forms of therapy. An example of such a minimally intrusive program is the Violence Interdite Sur Autrui (VISA) Program delivered by the Correctional Service of Canada, that encourages incest child molesters to take six steps that reduce recidivism. The 14 week program consists of 28 psychotherapy group meetings, 13 sex education work shops and 10 individual interviews. VISA has shown great success in reducing recidivism and, as of 1996, only two of over 130 of its participants were reconvicted for a further sexual offence. However, recent research has challenged traditional thinking about incest child molesters, by taking into account offenders' self reported sex offences that did not result in a conviction. It turns out that many offenders labelled first time incest child molesters, actually had prior incestuous and/or non-incestuous victims, and the offences performed on those victims never resulted in a conviction. When …