Within-treatment outcome among sexual offenders: A review

The concept of within-treatment outcome—how well an individual performs in treatment and/or the level of change achieved—has not been given as much attention by sex offender researchers as broader questions such as the overall effectiveness of treatment in reducing recidivism rates. In this article, past attempts to operationalize this concept among sex offenders are reviewed, including studies using psychometric change scores, risk instruments, Goal Attainment Scaling, and various other idiosyncratic rating systems. Findings on the validity of these conceptualizations and their methodological problems are discussed, with a particular focus on the relationship between within-treatment outcome and reoffending. Here, the question is posed: are offenders who show the greatest level of success in treatment less likely to reoffend following release compared to those who do not perform as well? This link is an important one, because of its intuitive sense. Such an assumption has the potential to influence important post-treatment clinical decisions, such as those relating to release and supervision. It is therefore important to ascertain whether this link (between positive within-treatment outcomes and reduced reoffending) is grounded in data. As shown in the review, the findings on this have been somewhat mixed.

Research highlights►The concept of within-treatment outcome—how well an individual performs in treatment and/or the level of change achieved—has not been given as much attention by sex offender researchers as broader questions such as the overall effectiveness of treatment in reducing recidivism rates. In this article, past attempts to operationalize this concept among sex offenders are reviewed, including studies using psychometric change scores, risk instruments, Goal Attainment Scaling, and various other idiosyncratic rating systems. Findings on the validity of these conceptualizations and their methodological problems are discussed, with a particular focus on the relationship between within-treatment outcome and reoffending. Here, the question is posed: are offenders who show the greatest level of success in treatment less likely to reoffend following release compared to those who do not perform as well? This link is an important one, because of its intuitive sense. Such an assumption has the potential to influence important post-treatment clinical decisions, such as those relating to release and supervision. It is therefore important to ascertain whether this link (between positive within-treatment outcomes and reduced reoffending) is grounded in data. As shown in the review, the findings on this have been somewhat mixed.