Sex Offender Treatment Intervention

Over the past few decades, sexual offences have become the focus of the public eye, prompting eval¬uation of current treatment interventions and the consideration of new treatment interventions with the aim of preventing and/or reducing future sexual offences (Belcher, 2008). This paper well aim to evaluate current literature examining the effectiveness of sex offender treatment interventions. It looks at which approaches appear to be most effective and why. Furthermore the paper attempts to identify if the treatment interventions are equally as effective with youth and adult offenders or not.
The success of sexual offender treatment interventions is a notable focus for many countries throughout the world (Lösel & Schmucker, 2005). This is …show more content…
MST was initially established for anti-social and pro-criminal youth offenders. MST is a family based treatment intervention that works with families to improve and develop the supervision, discipline and monitoring of young people (Kim, Benekos, & Merlo, 2015). The MST was adapted for the treatment of youth sex offenders and is identified as multisystamic therapy- problem sexual behaviour (MST-PSB) (Dopp, Borduin, & Brown, 2015). MST-PSB focuses on the aspects of a youth sex offenders ecology that are associated to the problem sexual behaviour, including, addressing family and youth repudiation about the sexual offence, views and attitudes that may have been a contributing factor to the offending behaviour and age appropriate sexual behaviours (Dopp, Borduin, & Brown, 2015). MST-PSB intervention overall attempts to interfere and disrupt the sexual assault cycle by engaging the young person to work with family members in order to create a safety plan and empower the family with the skills and resources to effectively manage the young person and the behaviours. Dopp, Borduin and Brown (2015) identified through their study of three clinical trials that MST-PSB is an effective treatment intervention with young people providing promising …show more content…
This paper aimed to briefly examine current literature in efforts to outline the most effective treatment interventions including CBT, RPT, MST and ADT. Although, these four treatment interventions have been found to be effective it is important to mention that CBT has quite a significant empirical support basis as possibly the most effective treatment in the reduction of sexual recidivism (Moster, Wnuk, & Jeglic, 2008). CBT interventions are an all-inclusive and effectual treatment for sex offenders and are considered to be the best practice for treatment of both youth and adult sexual offenders (Moster, Wnuk, & Jeglic, 2008). CBT has found to be significantly effective with adults, although is still able to be applied to youth sex offenders (Redondo, Sanchez-meca,& Garrido,1999). It has been highlighted that CBT is most effective when utilising other treatment interventions like that of relapse prevention therapy (RPT) (Redondo, Sanchez-meca,& Garrido,1999). Furthermore, CBT if utilised in conjunction with MST achieves more effective treatment outcomes (Kim, Benekois & Merlo, 2015). Kim, Benekois & Merlo (2015) identified that utilising both CBT and MST allows focus on sexual self-regulation and therefore lowering the risk of recidivism for youth sex offender than that of MST alone. In summary, CBT based treatment interventions are the most utilised and effective method