Sex offenders should be given special privileges in jail including early release, temporary release and transfers to open prisons if they agree to participate in treatment programmes, a report commissioned by the Department of Justice has found, writes Conor Lally
The report, which is not intended for full publication, concludes that while the current treatment programme for sex offenders causes positive changes in participants, 50 per cent were still judged to pose a high risk of reoffending after completing a programme.
It also says the current programme does little to challenge the mindset at the root of deviant tendencies. Participants were still able to rationalise their crimes against children and women and to justify these crimes to themselves with no loss of self-esteem. The offenders also developed no relapse prevention skills.
The authors of the report - Dr Gary O'Reilly and Prof Alan Carr of UCD's department of psychology - concluded that these key skills would be best developed in the community, where offenders face "relapse challenges".
They recommend the development of a completely new treatment and support system for offenders - both while in prison and on release - which would form part of a "continuum of strategies for the management of sexual offender risk".
Currently offenders are placed on the sex offenders' register and released at the end of their sentences.
The new elements recommended in the report include: the provision of safe accommodation and vocational opportunities on release; mental healthcare on release, including intensive one-to-one therapy focused on sexual offence-specific problems; the planned use of temporary release with strict conditions.
It also recommends that offenders facing the risk of a relapse should have a designated individual to whom they could turn for support, with a view to avoiding relapse. This should be backed by other support structures, such as group therapy, within the community. Similar mechanisms are used by alcoholics.
The report - An Independent Evaluation of the Irish Prison Service Sexual Offender Programme - is the first review of the programme in its 10 years in operation. Its findings are based on a study of 38 male sex offenders who undertook the nine-month course.
The authors found that the abuse for which the offenders had been jailed in most cases was only a small portion of the abuse they had perpetrated.
Some 50 per cent of participants were suspected of having abused their victims on more occasions than they disclosed while one in four were believed to have abused more individuals than they had disclosed.