Exploring the effectiveness of community sex offender treatment in relation to risk and re-offending

Abstract

There is growing confidence in the development of structured approaches – and actuarial tools – to predict the future risk of sexual re-offending, but optimism regarding the efficacy of treatment approaches for sex offenders is cautious. This study is an extension of previous research on an urban sample of convicted male sex offenders, 273 of whom have now been at risk in the community for an average of nine years, and 128 of whom have received community treatment from the Challenge Project programme in southeast London.

Despite difficulties in establishing a clear impact of treatment on the sexual re-offending rate, there were encouraging results to suggest that higher risk and more psychologically disturbed subjects, placed in cognitive-behavioural manualised treatment, were more likely to complete the programme and to achieve high levels of attendance; and these subjects were significantly less likely to fail in terms of breaches, general re-offending or indeed, any formal failure.

Keywords:

• sex offender
• recidivism
• treatment
• compliance

Notes

1. The original sample comprised 80 offenders against adults (rapists) and 221 child molesters, the larger number of child molesters being partly due to the first two years of the program excluding rapists from data collection.