A human rights-based practice framework for sexual offenders

Human rights create a protective zone around people and allow them the opportunity to further their own valued personal projects without interference from others. In our view, the emphasis on community rights and protection may, paradoxically, reduce the effectiveness of sex offender rehabilitation by ignoring or failing to ensure that offenders' core human interests are met. In this paper we consider how rights-based values and ideas can be integrated into therapeutic work with sex offenders in a way that safeguards the interests of offenders and the community. To this end we develop a rights-based normative framework (the Offender Practice Framework: OPF) that is orientated around the three strands of justice and accountability, offender needs and risk, and the utilization of empirically supported interventions and strength-based approaches. We examine the utility of this framework for the different phases of sex offender practice.

Rehabilitation, etiology, and self-regulation : the comprehensive good lives model of treatment for sexual offenders

In this paper, we draw upon two sets of theoretical resources to develop a comprehensive theory of sexual offender rehabilitation named the Good Lives Model-Comprehensive (GLM-C). The original Good Lives Model (GLM-O) forms the overarching values and principles guiding clinical practice in the GLM-C. In addition, the latest sexual offender theory (i.e., the Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending; ITSO) provides a clear etiological grounding for these principles. The result is a more substantial and improved rehabilitation model that is able to conceptually link latest etiological theory with clinical practice. Analysis of the GLM-C reveals that it also has the theoretical resources to secure currently used self-regulatory treatment practice within a meaningful structure.

Beliefs, values, and action : the judgment model of cognitive distortions in sexual offenders

In this paper, we present the Judgment Model of Cognitive Distortions (JMCD), a new model of cognitive distortions that spans multiple levels of analysis and contains different types of judgments. This model proposes that cognitive distortions tend to cluster together in what we have termed Thematic Networks (TN): judgments about beliefs, values, and actions. We argue that the three sets of judgments cover all types of cognitive distortions apparent in sexual offenders including those revolving around content (i.e., asserting characteristics to people, the offender, the world) and cognitive operations (i.e., denial, minimization, rationalizations). Following a description of the JMCD, we demonstrate how it can account for the cognitive schemata identified in sexual offenders by researchers and clinicians. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the clinical and research implications of the JMCD.