Term Papers on Sex Offenders And Violent Offenders:

Term Paper Title	Sex Offenders And Violent Offenders:
# of Words	2015
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	8.06

Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders:

Assessing and Treating the Problem

PS333 Forensic Psych

Final Essay

Sex offending is defined as the range of behaviour officially classified as sexual offences.  Treatment is usually for those who have committed an offence against others who did not or were not able to give consent.

There are three main groups of sex offenders.  The first are child molesters, who prey on those who are younger than 16 years of age.  The second are rapists, who offend against adults.  The third type of sex offender is those guilty of non-physical contact sex offences.  These would include exhibitionism, obscene phone calls, child pornography and other nuisances (Notes, 13 Feb, 2004).

Finkelhor has come up with a model consisting of four preconditions for sexual abuse.  First, the offender must be motivated to offend.  Secondly, the offender must overcome internal inhibitions, such as moral and ethical reasoning.  Next, the offender must overcome external obstacles to offending, including availability of a victim, etc.  Finally, the offender must overcome the victims' resistance and be able to physically and emotionally overpower his/her victim.  Upon researching paedophilia, Finkelhor and his colleague, Araji, came up with four possible explanations for committing the act.  The offender may have emotional congruence with children, sexual arousal to children, a blockage in an adult relationship or a disinhibition and is not deterred by ‘normal’ prohibitions regarding children and sexuality.  This framework can be used in treatment interventions in terms of how these predictions may apply to the individual offender.

From 1979 to 1990, the number of sex offenders in prison jumped from 1,500 up to 3,166, with a little more than 2,000 of them serving a sentence of four or more years.  In response to this alarming increase, the 1991 Home Secretary announced the initiation of treatment programs for sexual offenders in prisons (Notes, Feb 13, 2004).  There were two types of programs that were started:  core programs and extended programs.  These programs are based on the cognitive-behavioural model of offending, believing that cognitions and behaviours are important in motivating and maintaining offending.  Core programs focus primarily on cognitive distortions held by the offender, preconditions of offending, victim empathy, consequences of offending, alternative behaviours, risk factors and relapse prevention.  Extended programs, however, tend to focus on the offence-related behaviour such as anger control and social skills.

Within these core and extended programs, you can break it down further into group work or individualized programs.  Group work is often viewed as the most effective intervention method for three reasons:  1) It challenges and breaks down the secrecy which tends to be inherent in such offending, 2) Confrontation is credible and effective from the participation of other offenders and 3) It can reduce denial and increase acceptance of problems.  With many offenders thinking that there isn’t anything wrong with their behaviour and thinking that society is the problem, this final reason is very important.  Issues that are confronted in group work include statutory vs. voluntary involvement, an explicit value stance that sex offenders are socially and morally unacceptable, that such behaviour can be understood and controlled by the offender and confrontation within an educative approach that is supportive of personal change (Bernfeld, pg 117).

Many offenders, as stated previously, do not see a problem with their behaviour and tend to deny any wrong doing and minimize the offence.  There are six features of this denial and minimization:

1.                            Complete Denial:  claiming a false accusation, mistaken identity or memory loss.

2.                            Partial Denial:  it wasn’t really their fault(victim said they were older), or denial of the problem, saying they would never do it again

3.            ...

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