Treatment of Offenders

In California there are 110,000 sex offenders, 16,000 of those are in prison. 1,000 are in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Division of Juvenile Justice, 10,300 are under probation supervision, 7,000 under parole supervision are considered high risk of re-offending, and 5,000 under parole supervision are considered sexual habitual offenders.

Treatment is a big controversy on all states minds when they think of releasing sex offenders. The question is, does the treatment that our inmates are receiving work and deter the offenders from re-offending. Well the answer is hard to figure out, due to what do we look at as evidence? Do we look at the recidivism rate, or alcoholism and addiction levels, or do we use surveys and polygraph the offenders to see if they have the urge to re-offend? There are so many ways to check but which actually tells you the true answer?

A study was ran in Portland Oregon by Barry Maletzky, MD and Kevin McGovern, Ph.d who both worked at, “The Sexual Abuse Clinic of Portland Oregon.” During 1973 and 1990 they both followed 5,000 offenders in which 3,700 were pedophiles, 770 were exhibitionist and the rest were a variety of other paraphilias. All the offenders were treated in their clinic and similar clinics and using behavior oriented methods they tested the success of the treatment. The success was measured by
• No re-arrest
• Self report of no maladaptive sexual behaviors
• Reduced deviant arousal maintained post-treatment as verified on penile plethysmograph
• Significant other rating of patients behavior

The success rate was 94.7% of heterosexuals and 86.4% of homosexual pedophiles. Rapists showed 73.5% of success, exhibitionist and public masturbators were about 92% success rating.

The overall ratings were as such;
• Treated offenders reoffended at a rate of 11%, untreated at 17.6%
• True incest offenders have lower reoffense rates than other child molesters. (5.3% with 5-year follow-up without treatment, no recidivism with treatment, compares to 17.8% treated and 25% untreated for non-incestuous child molesters.)
• When subjects were followed for as long as ten years, the "treatment effect" weakened over time, but even in the tenth year, treated offenders reoffended less untreated men.
• Men treated before 1980 (more traditional methods) reoffended at a rate of 12.8%. while men treated after 1980 (present day methods) reoffended at 7.4% (1993 data – not included in article