Psychological assessment, treatment, and outcome with sex offenders

✍ Scribed by Raymond M. Wood; Linda S. Grossman; Christopher G. Fichtner

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 174 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0735-3936
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0798(200001/02)18:1<23::aid-bsl375>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

The frequency and impact of sexual oenses have led to the recent enactment of sexual predator'' laws. Such laws are intended to reduce sexual violence through treatment and involuntary con®nement. Sixty years ago, similar laws identifying sexual psychopaths'' were enacted and, in many states, eventually repealed for multiple reasons; among those reasons was an inability to demonstrate that treatment had any signi®cant impact on recidivism. That inability forced us to reexamine, among other issues, the population(s) which undergo treatment, the outcomes that are used to measure treatment eectiveness, and the processes that constitute treatment itself. Those issues are considered in this paper through a review of treatment programs based on psychodynamic, behavioral, and cognitive± behavioral theories. Although the evidence is sparse, it is fair to conclude that the latter have been found to be eective. We call for dynamic measures, eective treatments, and the resources necessary for both developments.