Search results

Sex offenders who refuse a place on a sex offender treatment programme are estimated to make up about half the prison sex offender population in England and Wales. It is important to motivate refusers to participate in treatment to reduce the likelihood of their re‐offending. In this pilot study we used the Personal Concerns Inventory‐Offender Adaptation (PCI‐OA), a semi‐structured motivational assessment, further adapting it for treatment refusers. We examined the effectiveness of the PCI‐OA (TR) with nine prisoners who had refused sex offender treatment (the treatment group) compared with nine refusers who received no intervention (the control group). The treatment group were at least 0.6 times as likely to show a positive motivational shift towards sex offender treatment as the untreated group. The practice implications of these results are discussed, and further evaluation of the PCI‐OA (TR) is recommended.

This study aims to investigate the perspectives and experiences of treatment facilitators regarding the effectiveness of treatment they delivered for high-risk offenders with complex needs. Within this study, the term complex needs refers to an individual who is managing several issues, such as physical illness, mental health issues and addiction disorders.

There was a total of 18 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with treatment facilitators from Australia and the UK. This study presents two key themes that emerged from the thematic analysis: “the importance of responsivity and active/creative activities in practice” and “the practitioner’s core concerns: issues with high-risk offenders treatment accessibility”.

The findings revealed that treatment facilitators considered treatment responsivity as core to treatment for high-risk offenders with complex needs and that active/creative activities were beneficial in achieving this. Additionally, treatment facilitators expressed concerns around the inaccessibility of treatment, including the barriers of talk therapy and the inability for offenders to receive the level of support necessary. Considering these findings, this study offers a discussion on the potential value of music therapy as a component of treatment for such offending populations.

The empirical data yielded from the interviewed treatment facilitators highlight that music therapy can play a role in supporting the beneficial components of treatment programs. Further implications centre on addressing the limitations of treatment that were identified through the interviews.

This study focusses on exploring the role of music therapy with high-risk offenders and who have complex needs when engaging in treatment programs. This paper recognises that the application and use of music therapy with this cohort has been neglected in the academic literature and research until recently.

This study summarises the results of a cognitive‐behavioural treatment group for sexual offenders (n=14) with intellectual limitations in the community.

All participants were convicted sex offenders serving probation orders or prison licences who attended a 14‐month treatment programme designed for sex offenders with intellectual limitations. The programme comprised of five main components: sex education; cognitive distortions; offending cycle; victim empathy; and relapse prevention. All participants completed psychometric measures specifically designed for people with intellectual limitations before and immediately after completing the treatment programme. The four core measures include: Victim Empathy; Sexual Attitudes and Knowledge Assessment (SAK); Questionnaire on Attitudes Consistent with Sexual Offenders (QACSO); and Sex Offences Self‐Appraisal Scale (SOSAS).

Post assessment results reveal significant improvements in sexual offence related attitudes; reductions in attitudes relating to cognitive distortions and pro‐sexual assault beliefs; and significant improvements in victim empathy.

Although none of the participants have been reconvicted for committing new sexual offences during the follow‐up period, given that the follow‐up was restricted to 12 months post‐treatment, it is not possible to conclude this intervention was successful in reducing risk of sexual recidivism.

The results from this study support the use of cognitive‐behavioural approaches in demonstrating positive cognitive shift (reconstructing cognitive distortions and attitudes to victim empathy) for sexual offenders with intellectual limitations.

De‐institutionalisation and resettlement have had a significant impact on offenders with learning disabilities (LD) who are now more visible in the wider community than before. Perhaps because of the challenges presented by people who were previously contained in institutions, there has been a growth of interest in their characteristics, the services and clinical interventions required to support them.This narrative review presents and discusses recent developments concerning offenders with LD. It looks at the historical association between crime and low intelligence, and then examines the evidence concerning the prevalence of offending by people with LD and recidivism rates. Recent research concerning service pathways for this population is summarised and progress in the development of actuarial, dynamic and clinical assessments of the future risk of offending is outlined.The second half of the paper focuses on a review of the evidence for and recent developments in the treatment of offending behaviour (anger/aggression, sexual offending and fire‐setting), utilising broadly cognitive behaviourally‐based approaches. Finally, future directions for research and practice innovation are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to increase our understanding of the role of mental disorder in sexual offending as well as identifying innovations in assessment and treatment with offenders who present with these typically complex risks and needs.

The converging literatures on “good lives” and other developments in sexual offender treatment are compared with recovery from mental disorder and what is known about the particular needs and characteristics of sexual offenders with mental illness and severe personality disorder (PD).

A key outcome of this review is that many mentally disordered sexual offenders have similar needs to those in prison and the community but there are particular challenges posed by severe PD, paraphilias and the relatively rare individuals whose offending is functionally linked to psychotic symptoms.

Practical implications include the need for case formulation of complex needs related to mental disorder using direct and indirect measures of attitudes and interests. Treatment needs to be responsive to very different personality and mental health presentations as well as problems with offending and cognitive schemas. Direct functional links between mental health symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations are very rare in practice and are usually secondary to PD and sexual offending issues. In practice, treatment promoting recovery from mental disorder is highly compatible with the “good lives” approach to sexual offender treatment. Staff development, supervision and support are particularly important for staff treating mentally disordered sexual offenders.

It is argued that mentally disordered sexual offenders are an under-researched sub-group within the wider sexual offender population. This paper brings together the relatively limited literature on treatment with examples of recent treatment innovations, multi-modal assessment approaches and reviews of research on the needs of this relatively uncommon but highly risky group.

This paper aims to explore treatment implications of the self‐regulation model (SRM) for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability in an effort to provide practical applications that could be employed in treatment.

The SRM of sexual offending proposes that difficulties in self‐regulation may lead to an increased risk of sexual offending; describing four potential pathways to sexual offending that are based on self‐regulation style and offence‐related goals. Research has focussed on the application and implications of this theoretical model for mainstream sexual offenders. However, more recently, there has been an increasing interest into the application and treatment implications for the SRM for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability. This paper reviews literature on both the SRM and related work on offenders with intellectual disability.

The evidence reviewed supports the notion that the SRM is a valid theoretical model on which to base treatment programmes for people with intellectual disabilities and specific recommendations are made for the design of treatment programmes with this client group.

It is suggested that this model should be used when devising intervention programmes for people with intellectual disabilities in the future.

The topic of offender rehabilitation has been subject to much research over the past decade. Numerous meta‐analytic reviews of offender treatment, particularly group treatment based on cognitive behavioural principles, have been reported. Together with the ‘triad of principles’ — risk, need and responsivity — they have formed the foundation upon which most offending behaviour interventions have developed. However, outcome data from existing programmes provides mixed evidence, and evidence for interventions for those in forensic mental health settings are still in their infancy. This paper critically considers the current evidence for the treatment of offending behaviour, and its application in forensic mental health settings, in order to inform development of such treatments in low secure mental health care. Most of the research focuses on non‐mental health settings, and is largely what will be considered here. The paper concludes that low secure interventions need to capitalise on the evidence of ‘what works’ while revisiting key concepts such as ‘dose’ and responsivity in order to design appropriate treatments. Individual outcome evaluation needs to form part of development in this area.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of prison‐based cognitive skills programmes in England and Wales in reducing reconviction. Two‐year reconviction rates were compared for adult male offenders who had participated in a cognitive skills programme between 1996 and 1998 (N = 649) and matched adult male offenders who had not participated (N = 1,947). There were no significant differences in the rates of reconviction between the treatment and matched comparisons. This contrasts with a previous study of prison‐based cognitive skills programmes. Possible explanations for the current finding are discussed. For example, these results may merely reflect expected variation; international experience mirrors the variable reductions in reconviction rates found so far in the evaluation of prison‐based programmes. This evaluation relates to a period when programmes were expanded rapidly, and this may have affected the quality of programme delivery.

This paper reviews the literature on therapeutic process specific to sexual offender treatment. The general clinical literature emphasises the importance of therapist style, the client's perceptions, the therapeutic alliance and cohesiveness. We highlight the importance of therapist characteristics, group cohesion and emotion in effective treatment of sexual offenders. Implications for programming and research are emphasised.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether aggression and substance use assessed during treatment differ based on risk level for substance-using male offenders of intimate partner violence (IPV).

Secondary analyses were conducted using data from Easton et al.’s (2017) study on substance-dependent IPV offenders. A cluster analysis was utilized in order to classify participants into typology groups. Analyses of covariance were conducted in order to determine group differences in aggression and substance use during treatment.

The paper provides results-related response to treatment based on offender typology. Results appear to reflect two typology groups with significant differences in psychopathy among groups. High-risk offenders demonstrated higher rates of violence throughout treatment compared to moderate- and low-risk offenders; however, no differences in substance use outcomes were found.

A limitation of the study is the extent to which the results can be generalized beyond substance using IPV offenders. Further investigation of treatment outcomes including alternate measures is needed in order to better translate theoretical typologies to clinical settings.

Results provide support for differentiating treatment for substance-using male offenders of IPV based on typology as those with low/moderate risk level appear to be distinctly different and have different treatment outcomes compared to high risk level offenders.

Although the relationship between risk level and treatment outcomes has been researched with Drug Court Offenders, treatment outcomes based on typology has not been evaluated among substance using male offenders of IPV.