Query over treatment for sex offenders

SOME sexual offenders may not be getting the most effective psychological treatments available, a new study claims.

A British Medical Journal (BMJ) report also warns that evidence for the efficacy of sex offender treatment programmes is often too readily accepted uncritically.

“Better understanding of the outcomes of treatments — either controlling and moderating or harming and worsening behaviour — could at least focus on the most beneficial and cost-effective interventions,” the report states.

An as yet unpublished study commissioned by the Irish Prison Service (IPS) is expected to show that there are benefits for prisoners who take part in a sex offender intervention programme, particularly in terms of re-offending.

But British specialists in psychology and criminology who looked at nine published studies of 567 sex offenders in Britain, the United States, Canada and parts of Europe, found that such studies on behavioural treatments are too small to be informative.

The BMJ study warned that while treatment can reduce re-offending rates, it does not provide a cure.

An IPS spokesperson said the report in the BMJ rightly highlights the complexity of addressing sexual offending and what successful treatment means in practice.

The spokesperson insisted, however, that the service’s Sex Offender Programme was designed to include key components of psychological interventions shown to be effective in specialist sex offender treatment facilities in the US, Canada, Britain and elsewhere.

However, latest figures from the IPS show that just 114 prisoners have completed the programme since it was introduced in 1994.

The IPS says it is concerned by the decline in the number of sex offenders applying for the programme.

At the start of June, according to the latest figures, there were 243 prisoners serving sentences for sexual offences.

Currently, there are three forms of direct therapeutic intervention for sex offenders operational within the Irish prison service.

Individual counselling from the IPS’s psychology service and from the probation and welfare service.

The Sex Offender Programme.

One-to-one interventions by visiting psychiatrists.

Participation in treatment programmes is not mandatory for sex offenders.