Juvenile Sex Offender Treatment: A Longitudinal Study on the Effectiveness of Treatment

Abstract

Community safety, decreasing juvenile sexual offense(s), the provision of treatment to reduce the high recidivism rates of juvenile sex offenders (JSOs), making communities unsafe, reveals the need for research to create empirically-based and best practice-comprised modalities are of paramount importance in the treatment of male (JSOs). A high level of treatment efficacy is perhaps, the primary societal and therapeutic concern. Designed to examine the efficacy of the Integrated Sex Offender Treatment Program’s (ISOTP) for male juvenile sexual offenders housed in two secure-care facilities, this study evidences future implications that will shape treatment selection within secure-care, residential and outpatient treatment facilities. Measures determined levels of cognitive distortions, depression, and anxiety of male JSOs, their response to treatment is believed to be either a risk or a protective factor against high recidivism within this population. Repeated measures ANOVAs measured each difference in the mean scores of three measures for six collection points over a two-year period of time. Although global ANOVA results showed significant differences between each collection point, post hoc testing did not reveal statistical differences between various data points. The paired-sample t tests did show significant improvements over and across six collection points potentially increasing treatment options for both male JSOs and tentatively that of JSOs in general. Findings support the literature positing ISOTP as relevant in reducing the cognitive distortions, depression, and anxiety associated with risk factors for recidivism rates associated with male JSOs and tentatively other populations being treated within secure-care facilities and other settings.