Aggression, Violence and Recidivism: at the 85 % level of Confidence

(Originally written on October 31, 2002)

In 1996, in Montreal, at the Canadian Psychologist Association Congress I spoke alone, I might add, against the Hare PCLR. My abstract was published. Now in 2002 Gendreau et al have come to some of my earlier conclusions about this assessment tool. Further, today, they found that the Canadian assessment tool the Level of Service Inventory – Revised in predicting general (.37 vs .23) and violent (.26 vs .21) recidivism was better than the PCL R. What this means is that both instruments are poor tools for predicting the future. No one can predict the future. I have used both instruments and find them wanting.

Dr. Friel has spent his entire professional life in the assessment and treatment and in lecturing about people who commit heinous crimes. He has come to the conclusion that today, at this moment, the best method available at the 85 % level of confidence is the Forensic Examination in Psychology Method.

Sex Offenders and Group Treatment

Adolescents

There are some researchers who think that about 10% of adolescent sex offenders go on to become adult sex offenders. Thinking this idea through, using the available literature, it would suggest to me that adolescent sex offender group treatment programs need to be assessed to determine if they are being a benefit or not.

Adults

Group therapy for adults  is precarious for these reasons and others:

• Bullying – it is not uncommon for the group leader or one of the group members to bully one of the offenders into agreeing to something that they would not normally agree to just to stop the psychological harassment.
• New Sexual Perversions - perverse  Mental Sexually Fantasies can be learned from other sex offenders.
• Connections – it is highly likely that some of these men will form social bonds due to intimate knowledge learned about each other and connect with each other in the community sometime later.
• Release – since conditional release can be dependent upon treatment it is not unreasonable to assume that in group many men will say what the  group facilitator wants to hear and this then will be reported as progress when in fact it is deception.

Summary

There is only one answer, at present, to this issue and that is one to one individual assessment and therapy with a trained clinical psychologist or social worker for each sex offender.