Treatment of Sex Offenders - Research Paper Example

Treatment of Sex Offenders Abstract This analysis explores relevant literature on the difference between difference between sex offenders who target adult victims and paedophiles in order to distinguish various cognitive and behavioural motivations among the two groups of offenders. Further the analysis explores available treatment methods and procedures such imprisonment, psychotherapy and castration of the offenders. With reduction of recidivism rates being an essential determinant of where the best treatment should take place, psychotherapy has been found to be the most effective method especially when the victim undergoes full treatment procedure. There are a number of studies that have been undertaken to distinguish between sex offenders who target adult victims and paedophilias. Shechory and Ben-David (2005) report that previous studies have indicated that rapists are more emotionally restrained and antisocial while on the other hand, paedophiles and child molesters in general are thought to be more regressive. These studies on the differences between sex offenders who target adult victims and paedophiles have indicated that the former were more likely to be defensive, highly aggressive, hostile, resentful as well as leading an alienated life. Whereas paedophiles are more emotionally disturbed and had low self-esteem levels as well as lacking self-confidence, emotional maturity in addition to exhibiting high levels of emotional pressure and anxiety. An important distinction between paedophiles and offenders of adult victims is the increased likelihood of paedophiles having a history of childhood sexual abuse. Many of the paedophiles have been victims during their childhood years with only a small fraction of offenders of adult victims reporting sexual abuse during early stages of their development. Further paedophiles tend to idealize specific traits related with childhood such as innocence. Such traits inform their preference for child victims as they search to take advantage of purity as an aspect of innocence that is part of childhood. There is still a section of paedophiles who think that having sexual contact with children is not harmful to their victims while others even believes that children want sexual contact to such extend of believing that the victim initiated sexual contact. (Cohen & Galynker, 2002) Both offenders of adult victims and paedophiles suffer from inadequate intimate relations with other people and loneliness. These groups of offenders fail to establish any form of trust related to normal sexuality due to their problematic social interactions. However, Shechory and Ben-David (2005) notes paedophiles tend to be more fearful of intimacy in close relationships than are sex offenders of adult victims due to their fearful or preoccupied attachment style. Generally, those who offend adult victims were found to show more affective psychopathology that includes posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety as well as major depression while on the other hand, paedophiles are more affective, neurotic, and socially impaired than offenders adult victims. Further, in most traditional analyses paedophiles have been portrayed as being less aggressive therefore resulting in most of this sexual offences being less violent than those involving offenders of adult victims. It is due to the mostly violent nature of sexual offence involving adult victims, that offenders targeting this group of victims are mostly portrayed as having strong aggressive features. Adult victims possess more energy for aggressive self-defence and are therefore prone to presenting strong resistance compared to child victims who are in most lured by gifts to make them follow the paedophile’s instruction (Shechory and Ben-David, 2005). However, it is not true to claim that there is no violence when children are involved as some research has noted a subdivision of very violent offenders exists. Examination of the nature of sexual contact involving adult offenders and child victims have revealed that in clinical samples involving either familial or non-familial sexual offenses, there was evidence of both groups of offenders exposing the victims to violent assaults. Therefore, sexual offences involving both offenders of adult victims and paedophiles have the potential of getting violent even when it involves contact where the victim and offender are familiar (Shechory and Ben-David, 2005). There are a number of treatment measures for both sexual offenders of adult victims and paedophiles with their effectiveness and success rate being assessed based on recidivism rate when each is used to treat an offender. However, these forms of treatment have been shown to have different results on the offenders depending on whether the type of victim that was assaulted. Almost all of the offenders who are found guilty of sexual assault are incarcerated. Both paedophiles and offenders of adult victims face increased risks from prison mates due to the nature of their crime (Shechory and Ben-David, 2005). Consequently, all sexual offenders find themselves in need of separation from the rest of inmate population to prevent incidences of physical injury, harassment, murder and in some cases rape committed by other prisoners. This segregation increases their psychological torture as the sexual offenders in such cases do not have access to communal prison facilities. Therefore, prison sentencing does not offer the best alternative for rehabilitation of sexual offenders due to the reliance on punishment rather than treatment. Without incorporating other treatment programmers, these Incarceration prevents sexual offender do not undergo behavior change and most will go back to their previous activities when they complete their prison sentence (McGuire, 2002). As a result of the failure of imprisonment to effectively treat sexual offenders, alternative methods such as psychotherapy have been explored in their treatment processes with a view of effecting a cognitive- behavioural change among offenders. This procedure involves the modification of the offender’s arousal patterns, thought patterns as well as their behaviour to reduce the chances of reoffending. There are various means to achieve these modifications such as pairing a para-philic stimulus with slight electric shock, foul odour or induced nausea at the peak of arousal during aversion therapy as a way of altering the offender’s sexual arousal patterns. Positive reinforcement can also be exploited as a means of replacing offender’s pattern of arousal with stimuli that socially acceptable such as a complying adult (Maletzky, 2002) psychotherapy has also included cognitive restructuring as part of the treatment process with the aim of adjusting the offender’s sexual views about sex. This procedure involves putting in place various mechanisms to challenge the inherent cognitive alterations in the offender’s mind frame such as the belief that victims find enjoyment when raped as well as the misconception that a child victim consents or initiates sexual activity with the offender (Maletzky, 2002). Castration has also been used in human history to deter sex offenders or potential offenders from assaulting or thinking of doing so to their victims with the practice being legal in many European countries such as Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Iceland, and Sweden as well as in a number of U.S. states. This method included bilateral orchiectomy which is a process where the excision of both testes is done to reduce sexual urge and activity among offenders although erectile response is still possible for a number of subjects. This group of subjects reported very low levels of sexual recidivism with those who reoffend being treated with testosterone to further decrease any prevailing symptom related to castration. However, the procedure might have quite severe side effects on the subjects that surpass sex-related physical changes such as decrease of body hair, flabby skin, enlarged male breasts, heart and respiratory complications, chronic pain among others (Weinberger, Sreenivasan, Garrick and Osran, 2005). Therefore from the foregoing analysis, there are a number of differences in the cognitive and behavioural patterns of offenders of adult victim and paedophiles but their treatment procedures are similar. Psychotherapeutic methods are among the most effective measures to treat both offenders of adult victims and paedophiles. This method leads to cognitive and behavioural modifications of the offenders and therefore treating the underlying causes that motivate their actions. Prison sentencing without parallel programs such as therapy can be ineffective as the treatment process as the method is more inclined towards punishment as opposed to adjusting the subject’s sexual orientations. Additionally, although castration has high a higher possibility of preventing reoccurrence of sexual offense, the side effects on the subjects calls for exploitation of alternative mechanism first before using it to deter recidivism. References Cohen, L. J. & Galynker, I (2002). Clinical feature of pedophilia and implications for treatment. Journal of Clinical Psychiatric Practice, 8, 276-289. Maletzky, B.M. (2002). The paraphilias: Research and treatment. In P.E. Nathan & J.M. Gorman (Eds.) A Guide to Treatments that Work (pp. 525-558). New York: Oxford University Press. McGuire, J. (2002). Criminal sanctions versus psychologically-based interventions with offenders: A comparative empirical analysis. Psychology, Crime and Law, 8, 183-208. Shechory, M., & Ben-David, S. (2005). Aggression and anxiety in rapists and child molesters. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 49(6), 652-661. Weinberger, L. E., Sreenivasan, S., Garrick, T., & Osran, H. (2005). The impact of surgical castration on sexual recidivism risk among sexually violent predatory offenders. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online 33(1), 16-36. Read More