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Different clients, different needs? Practice issues in community‐based treatment for sex offenders
Author(s) -
Allam Jayne,
Middleton David,
Browne Kevin
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
criminal behaviour and mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1471-2857
pISSN - 0957-9664
DOI - 10.1002/cbm.145
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , intervention (counseling) , psychology , flexibility (engineering) , service (business) , sexual abuse , sex offender , set (abstract data type) , treatment and control groups , psychiatry , clinical psychology , medicine , suicide prevention , poison control , medical emergency , statistics , mathematics , economy , pathology , computer science , economics , programming language
In 1993, The West Midlands Probation Service set up a sex offender unit (SOU), the largest in England, with the aim of providing a specialist treatment service for sex offenders serving a community sentence. This article presents a brief description of the treatment programme and discusses some of the issues which have arisen during the design and implementation of the programme. Although cognitive‐behavioural groupwork is widely believed to be the most effective intervention for men who sexually abuse children, it is thought that there are some groups of offenders who may not derive maximum benefit from the standard programme and for whom it might be necessary to modify existing practice by providing alternative or complementary interventions. The SOU has attempted to address some of the problems identified by adapting the existing programme for clients with learning disabilities and for men who sexually abuse adult women. In addition, a victim‐to‐victimiser group is run parallel to the treatment group and is offered to clients who were themselves child victims of sexual abuse. As yet, the long‐term effectiveness of tailoring treatment to suit offender characteristics is not known. Nevertheless, client and staff feedback has been positive. Treatment providers elsewhere may not have the resources to run different groups for different categories of offender. However, sex offenders are not a homogeneous group and greater programme flexibility may be needed to provide effective treatment for clients and adequate protection to the public. Copyright © 1997 Whurr Publishers Ltd.