Sex-Offender Treatment 241a meta-analysis of 81 sex-offender treatment studies involving 11,350 subjects. The
results overwhelmingly show that sex offenders who received treatment while in
prison have a lower rate of recidivism than do those offenders who did not receive
treatment. Among the sex offenders who received treatment in prison, 9.4% re of-
fended, whereas those offenders who did not receive treatment had a reoffense rate
of 17.6%.
In order to accurately examine the issue of treatment: efficacy among sex of-
fenders, it is imperative to differentiate the offenders and not address the entire
sex-offender population as a homogenous group. In this regard, numerous studies
show that incest offenders have a very low rate of recidivism (Alexander, 1997;
Hanson & Bussiere, 1996; Hanson, Steffy, & Gauthier, 1993). Referring again to
Alexander's (1997) meta-analysis, the recidivism rate of treated incest offenders was
4.0%, whereas untreated incest perpetrators had a recidivism rate of 12.5%. For the
incest-perpetrator population, it is apparent that treatment is quite effective in re-
ducing future victimization. The comparison between treated and untreated rapists,
however, does not provide encouraging results. Rapists who received treatment had
a recidivism rate of 20.1% while untreated rapists had a reoffense rate of 23.7%. This
clearly illustrates the point that treating sex offenders as a homogenous group will
lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the effectiveness of treatment. The empiri-
cal research shows that treatment is quite successful for incest perpetrators; however,
it is substantially ineffective for rapists. Therefore, perhaps the question that needs to
be addressed is not whether to treat sex offenders, but rather, for whom is treatment
most successful?
Another area that has received a considerable amount of research attention per-
tains to the type of treatment that is most beneficial for sex offenders. The consensus
among those who treat this population is that a cognitive-behavioral program which
focuses on relapse prevention is the most effective (Laws, 1989; Marshall & Barbaree.
1990; R. A. Prentky, Knight, & Lee, 1997). Such treatment programs have been re-
ferred to as "state-of-the-art" in terms of sex-offender treatment (Freeman-Longo
& Knopp, 1992). As mentioned previously, rapists tend to have a lower success
rate in terms of reducing recidivism after treatment. However, based on the meta-
analysis conducted by Alexander (1997), all sex offenders, including rapists, had a
recidivism rate under 11% after receiving treatment that utilized relapse prevention
techniques. Thus, instead of asking whether to treat sex offenders, perhaps the focus
needs to be placed on which type of treatment program is most effective for this
population. There is a considerable amount of current research which lends support
to the idea that cognitive-behavioral treatment, particularly when coupled with a
relapse prevention component, is quite effective in reducing recidivism among sex
offenders.
Despite the amount of psychological literature which illustrates the effectiveness
of certain treatment modalities for particular types of sex offenders, the legislature
continues to decrease funding for these treatment programs and exerts a great deal
of energy supporting the chemical castration of child molesters (Alexander, 1997),