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Research looks at rehabilitation of sex offenders
Published by the Communications and Development Department
14 October 2002
Rehabilitating sexual offenders has traditionally been fraught with problems but a University of Canterbury graduate could have found some answers.
Dr Andrew Frost, a Senior Practitioner at the Kia Marama Special Treatment Unit, Rolleston Prison, graduated from Canterbury in 2000 with a PhD in Social Work.
He was recently awarded the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Graduate Student Research Award and has been asked to present a paper on his research at the 21st Annual Research and Treatment Conference in Montreal, Canada.
The effectiveness of traditional therapy programmes relies on the willingness of sexual offenders to undertake extensive self-disclosure.
Sexual offenders use a variety of tactics to avoid engaging with their therapist. This reduces the effectiveness of therapy, meaning some are never fully rehabilitated and as a result become repeat offenders.
Dr Frost’s study set out to explore therapeutic engagement from the perspective of offenders to find out what these tactics were, classify them and develop strategies to overcome them.
His study investigated the experiences and motivations of participants facing the challenge of revealing to others the cognitive, behavioural and emotional details of their offence process.
Kia Marama Principal Psychologist Browyn Rutherford said the research was important because it revealed something about how the thinking of inmates undertaking the programme changed in response to treatment.
“It allows us to assess prior to treatment how men are likely to react to the new information they are exposed to during treatment. Knowing how they are likely to act will enable us to do more to bring about change in their thinking.”
She anticipated that Dr Frost would further develop his study and this would lead to the establishment of a psychometric measure for sexual offenders.
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