Assessment and Support Consultation: Enhancing Social Support for Sexual Offenders

Abstract

Social support is a known predictor of both sexual offender recidivism (Andrews & Bonta, 2010) and client recovery from numerous clinical disorders (Drake, O’Neal, & Wallach, 2008; Schön, Denhov, & Topor, 2009). Interventions that engage social supports have demonstrated positive outcomes in many clinical treatments for a wide range of psychopathologies (Rea et al., 2003; Shimazu et al., 2011), but have not yet been broadly incorporated into forensic practice. Furthermore, some criminogenic risk assessment measures do not routinely seek collateral information from social supports, despite the benefits of doing so (Bonta, 2002; Doren, 2004). This article reviews extant work, and proposes a methodology—Assessment and Support Consultation (ASC)­—aimed at bringing support systems into the sexual offender assessment and treatment milieu. Aims for this model and suggestions for its development and implementation are discussed.

Keywords:

• sexual offender
• recidivism
• social support
• risk assessment