Treatment of Adult Sex Offenders

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the current state of sex offender treatment , with a focus on the question of the effectiveness of treatment. We begin by discussing some problems that arise in answering this question, followed by a brief discussion of the history of sex offender treatment, and a more in-depth discussion of studies that have looked at the effectiveness of treatment programs, most of which took place under markedly poor conditions (in highly restrictive prison environments). The larger question – and the " bottom line " concern – is the overall effectiveness of management strategies for reducing sexual victimization rates. Management of sex offenders in the community (i.e., on probation or parole) makes use of, in varying degrees, numerous strategies, including supervision by trained probation and parole officers, medication, substance abuse screening , polygraphy, tracking with global positioning systems (GPS), community notification, and treatment. In this article we only address treatment of adult males. All of these other strategies can, and should, be evaluated for their effectiveness alone and in combination, but doing so is beyond the scope of this paper. The effectiveness of treatment, or any other management strategy for that matter, boils down to one question: Does it reduce victimization and, if so, by how much? We try to answer this question by examining the re-offense rates of known sex offenders. Available data admittedly provides an imperfect answer. The number of sex offenders known to the criminal justice system represents only a small proportion of the total estimated number of sex offenders. Moreover, among those who are known to the criminal justice system, our estimates of re-offense rates are based only on those prosecuted and convicted of sex crimes. As such, our analysis does not include persons who commit at least three types of " re-offense " – those who are caught but not prosecuted for a sex re-offense, those who are prosecuted for a sex re-offense but are not convicted or pled to non-sexual charges, and those who were caught, prosecuted, or convicted for an offense that was not a sex offense (ie, a property crime). To reiterate, the term " re-offense, " as used throughout this paper, signifies a sex offender who as been caught, prosecuted, and convicted for a subsequent sex offense. Of all of the groups of individuals who are treated for behavioral problems, sex offenders …