The Center for Sex Offender Management has released this report (pdf) titled Understanding Treatment for Adults and Juveniles Who Have Committed Sex Offenses. The Center is a project of the Department of Justice and was formed in the late 1980s and has published many reports on the state of sex offender issues. It's good that we have federal funding focusing on the problem of sex offenses. Indeed, with all of the rhetoric and substantial resources spent on prosecuting and incarcerating sex offenders, one can easily conclude that sex offenses are a major criminal justice issue and the more we know the better. We should try to understand criminal behavior better in an effort to stem the tide of crimes against our citizens and help our offender citizens leave their criminal offending in the past.
That said, there are a few aspects of this report worth noting.
On page 5, the authors refer to the Pathways model of treatment:
The Pathways model takes into account various biological, cultural, environmental, and other underlying factors that are believed to result in sexually abusive behavior towards children.
Is that so? Well, where is the evidence that pedophilia has any biological aspects? I'd like to see those studies. While this may not seem an important distinction, it is rather indicative of our current culture and thinking about crime. Many assume that there must be a biological cause for criminal behavior. Indeed, many point to various studies reporting some brain abnormality with known criminals as proof of a supposed link. Of course, as we like to say in science, correlation does not prove causation. But that's not the real point either. When we speak about abnormal p300 levels or anomalies in limited areas of the brain, science simply cannot say that those results have any inherent meaning to the behavior in question. Why? Because those findings are known in so many populations that any conclusion about their role in a particular behavior is merely speculation. Take the p300 level: Numerous studies have reported abnormal p300 levels from everything from smoking to psychopathy. What valid conclusion can we draw from this? At the most, folks with abnormal p300 levels have some difficulties with sensory gating. More importantly, however, is how should this translate into legal questions of culpability? Too often, scholars make a quick jump and infer that somehow this means something important for the moral agent that our criminal law fundamentally rests upon. Yet, as we learn more about the brain it is highly likely that such abnormalities are really variations within the population at large. This is quite different from schizophrenia, where there is abundant evidence of a fundamental and overwhelming break down of the brain which devastates the mind behind the actor. This is why Blackstone and our common law view punishment of the insane immoral.
On page 7, the report discusses treatment that focuses on a sex offenders positive attributes as well as his problems:
Because this "good-lives" model of rehabilitation is strength-based and designed to facilitate overall wellness and meaningful change for individuals.
And from page 8:
[f]or many years, providers in sex offender programs seemed to favor somewhat aggressive, confrontational, and punitive approaches to treatment, a style which was later questioned...
These are good points. As much as we want to be completely punitive towards sex offenders because of their reprehensible crimes, mental health treatment simply doesn't work well that way. If we're really interested in providing treatment we should encourage treatment that both tears down the bad behavior and builds up the good. In fact, I'd argue that in a moral sense, a just retributive policy in general is one that offers swift, certain, and severe punishment with one hand and rehabilitation with the other (if the offender is so inclined to accept the rehabilitation). We should correct our fellow citizens wrongdoings, but also offer them a pathway to "redemption" except where their crimes are so heinous that they deserve the ultimate penalty.
Finally, from page 10, the report mentions a more "optimistic perspectives" on recidivism by referring to a meta-analysis by Hanson et al. Dr. Hanson is a great scientist who has done good and important work. But I think the report authors like so many folks misunderstand what a meta-analysis does. In combining previous studies to arrive at an effect size, any meta-analysis is only as good as the original data. That is, if the original studies are flawed or severely limited, then any results from a subsequent meta-analysis suffer from those same limitations. There's a real danger in thinking that meta-analysis studies somehow overcome the limitations of the original studies. Yet the opposite is true: Often meta-analysis inflates estimates of effectiveness by using poorly designed studies with good results to compensate for better designed studies that report poor outcomes.
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