Handbook on Sexual Violence (56 page)

Prescott and Levenson 2010; Ward 2010). For example, Glaser (2010) proposed that treatment programmes for offenders are unethical according to traditional codes of ethics, and that they more correctly should be described as forming part of an offender’s punishment. Gendreau
et al
. (2009) have also criticised much of current practice with offenders for drawing on intuitive models of how we want offenders to be different rather than adhering firmly to evidence-based practice, terming the tendency to work from intuition as ‘correctional quackery’. Recently, debate in the sex offender treatment field has intensified about the extent to which typical treatment practices best meet the descriptions of punishment, rehabilitation, or correctional quackery (e.g. Mann
et al
. 2010b).

It is hardly contentious to suggest that, where evidence exists, policy and

practice in the management and treatment of perpetrators of sexual violence should be evidence-based. That is, interventions should be designed in accordance with the findings of evaluation studies of rehabilitation with offenders. Meta-analyses of interventions with offenders have identified a number of key principles associated with greater effectiveness in terms of reduced reoffending (e.g. Andrews and Bonta 2006), although with sexual offenders in particular, evaluations have generally found only modest impact on reoffending (e.g. Lo¨sel and Schmucker 2005), suggesting that there is considerable room for improvement in our understanding of ‘What works?’ with sexual offenders. Where sufficient evidence does not exist, then theory- based policy is permissible. Interventions could be designed and implemented based on theoretical ‘models of change’ (specifications for how and why the programme ought to work), although such endeavours should be considered experimental and so would only be ethical if accompanied by robust research and evaluation. Particularly when evidence does not exist, policy-makers and those in applied practice need to be highly cognisant of the dangers of correctional quackery, which could also be termed instinct-based policy, where interventions are delivered without regard to the evidence base and without respecting the need for an evidence base. Those who succumb to correctional quackery explicitly or implicitly reject the scientific approach and overemphasise approaches that ‘feel right’. Such interventions are frequently ineffective or even harmful (Gendreau
et al
. 2009).

The second, and related, question is to what extent do the ideas presented

in this
section of the Handbook develop our knowledge in relation to the risk, need and responsivity principles of offender rehabilitation? Developed by Andrews and Bonta (2006), the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) principles have an established evidence base, and have been specifically demonstrated to hold in relation to the rehabilitation of those convicted of sexual offending (Hanson
et al
. 2009). The principles essentially state that rehabilitation programmes should: (a) target higher risk offenders and should be proportionate to the risk of the participants; (b) target the factors known to raise risk of reoffending – typically labelled as ‘dynamic risk factors’ or ‘criminogenic needs’; and (c) use methods to which offenders are most likely to respond. Broadly, the methods of offender rehabilitation interventions should be cognitive-behavioural, and more specifically, interventions should be flexible enough that they can be personalised to each participant’s individual characteristics, cultural world and

learning style.

Considering the chapters in Part Two of this book, several themes emerge of interest to those who work with perpetrators.

Individual v. societal responsibility for offending

One theme running through the chapters, not always explicitly stated, is that of responsibility for offending. Traditionally (Salter 1988) and to this day (McGrath
et al
. 2010) treatment programmes for sexual offenders have greatly emphasised the treatment goal of ‘taking responsibility’ for offending. An offender is usually considered to have taken responsibility for his offending if he gives an account of his offending in a way that matches the official records, and if he additionally attributes his offending to stable internal factors, rather than external or unstable factors which are typically categorised as excuses. So, to give a crude example, an offender who explains his offending by reference to his sexually deviant interests would be more likely to be regarded as taking responsibility for his offending than one who refers to alcohol and stress as contributing factors. While this has been the accepted approach to working with violent perpetrators for many years, more recently it has been observed that the evidence base for this practice is actually weak if not non-existent, and that there may be dangers in placing too much emphasis on the need for internal attributions of cause (Maruna and Mann 2006). Consequently, there has been a call for empirically established dynamic risk factors for offending, such as sexual interests and intimacy deficits, to receive the greatest emphasis in any intervention programme (Mann
et al
. 2010).

In two of the chapters in this
section (Phoenix and Jones) there is an

implicit argument that responsibility for sexual violence lies at the broad societal level. It is argued that sexual violence performs a function for society and that it is the male-dominated society that ‘benefits’ from it. In some contrast, Vetere’s and Brown’s chapters point more to individual responsibility for sexual violence. In the Introduction to this part of the book, it is commented that ‘being able to challenge [distancing of responsibility for violence] in such a way that the perpetrator recognises their responsibility for their behaviour is central to the success of such clinical work’. However, Vetere’s chapter describes an approach to intervention that, in line with other recent thinking on sexual violence, actually concentrates more on what has been termed active responsibility – taking responsibility for the future – than on passive responsibility – where the perpetrator is required to make detailed statements of his full responsibility for his violence. Vetere’s practice in asking ‘future questions’ and exploring family members’ aspirations are excellent examples of inspiring and encouraging active responsibility for change.

Assessing individual motivations from offence behaviours

Brown’s chapter in this volume focuses in particular on whether there can be said to be a continuum of sexual violence, aiming to develop Kelly’s 1988

conceptualisation of sexual violence into an argument which holds greater explanatory and predictive power. Brown’s analysis addresses both victim and perpetrator experiences of sexual violence (seen, for example, in Table
7.1). The chapter is particularly concerned with distinguishing different types of sexual violence against adult women (the sexual abuse of children is not included in the analysis) examining whether qualitative distinctions can be made between sexually violent behaviours and whether particular offender pathologies may be associated with different behaviours. Although the chapter also acknowledges the need to answer the ‘why?’ questions about sexual violence, its main focus is on the definition and categorisation of such violence, arguing that it is more psychologically significant to categorise violent acts in terms of observed behaviours than in terms of internal processes. Brown deals with five categories of sexual violence: sexual harassment, domestic violence, stalking, rape, and sexual murder; noting in particular that there are some overlaps between stalking and domestic violence, and that some behaviours could occur in more than one category (e.g. the use of a weapon can occur in both rape and sexual murder). Some behaviours occur so frequently across all categories (for example, threats of violence) that they can be considered to be core components of sexual violence generally, while other less frequent behaviours are more specific to particular categories – the modus operandi for that category – and the most low- frequency behaviours could be seen as the signatures of particular offenders. Brown discusses some published analyses of the behaviours associated with different types of violence which have identified common themes (for instance, movement of the body in sexual murder) and then subtypes of behaviour enabling that offence type to be divided into clusters (for instance, the four clusters associated with sexual murder were labelled rape, fury, perversion and predator; Kocsis
et al
. 2002). As this last example shows, one benefit of such attempts to cluster offence behaviours is the potential for linking observable behaviours to motivations and thus intervention approaches. The behaviours associated with intimacy-seeking might demand a different rehabilitative focus than the behaviours associated with revenge.

In the literature and in current practice with those who have sexually offended, it is already agreed that interventions need to be flexible enough to respond to individual criminogenic needs. Identification of such needs usually takes place through a multimodal approach including particularly offender self-report (both unsystematically through interview and systematically through psychometric testing) and analysis of observable behaviours. The latter, however, usually follows an idiographic approach and there is definitely room for a more evidence-based approach. The idea that analysis of offending behaviours using multidimensional scaling could assist in classifying offenders’ criminogenic needs is appealing. In this
chapter, Brown describes only a few such studies and they are described non-critically so from this review it is not possible to draw a confident conclusion about the potential for developing assessments based on such studies. However, there is clearly a promising line of enquiry emerging here which could usefully assist those who assess perpetrators of sexual violence.

The likely effect of social acceptance of sexual violence on programme effectiveness

Jones argues that rape cannot be understood if it is divorced from its sociological context. That is, rape is a worldwide, extremely widespread, phenomenon, completely underestimated from the number of rapes for which convictions are achieved. In fact, the normalcy of rape, and the likelihood of escaping conviction, mean that the convicted rapist is probably highly unrepresentative of the average perpetrator of sexual violence.

Two arguments in particular are featured in this chapter
. The first is that a rape is very unlikely to result in a criminal conviction. Thus, for a man, to rape a woman is ‘a low-risk activity’. The second argument is that rape is found worldwide, in all cultures and societies, and particularly is so associated with times of war that it clearly forms one of the weapons of war. Drawing on the evidence base for both these arguments, the author concludes that ‘rape [is] an everyday event rather than an out-of-the-ordinary violation’ (p. 194). The solution to the problem of rape must originate from society rather than from within individual rapists.

Such an argument makes for interesting reflection given that most jurisdictions mainly attempt to respond to the problem of sexual offending through rehabilitative programmes for individual offenders. These programmes are based on psychological theories of offending, and so concentrate on attempting to change attitudes, teaching new skills, and enabling offenders to find pro-social ways to meet their sexual and intimacy needs. Evaluations of psychological programmes for offenders show mixed results but, in general, modern programmes seem to achieve small but robust reductions in offending rates (e.g. Lo¨sel and Schmucker 2005; Hanson
et al
. 2009). However, the scrutiny and discussion of the effectiveness of such programmes is intense, and when the programmes fail to have large effects on recidivism, or when individuals reoffend despite having participated in an intervention, the blame is laid either at the door of the individual offender (‘he failed to respond to the programme’) or of the programme itself (‘the programme was not effective’). Taking a sociological perspective, however, it might be worth asking if any programme operating from a purely psychological perspective could be expected to have more than a small effect, given the argument that rape must serve certain functions for society. Can it be possible to convince a rape perpetrator that his attitudes are faulty, or that his victim is not responsible for his behaviour, when such beliefs that justify rape are shared by numerous others across history and across cultures? Is it even ethical to operate a programme which is based on the notion that those who sexually offend do so because of individual pathology, when in fact the evidence is that ‘sexual violence is embedded in social systems’ (p. 195)?

Jones’s chapter acknowledges both that social attitudes are hard to shift and that, if rape serves a function for society, there may be a lack of will to change social attitudes that accept sexual violence. In her conclusion, Jones states that ‘to engage in meaningful research into sexual violence, we need to understand the connections between the micro-dynamics (why individual men rape) and the macro patterns (why rape is a global phenomenon)’ (p. 197). If this is a

necessity for meaningful research, it is also true for meaningful intervention. While many convicted men respond positively to rehabilitation programmes focused on sexual offending, it is also the case that many offenders are resistant to the idea of undertaking such programmes (Mann 2009) and that their resistance is often linked to the perception that the psychological perspective of such programmes labels and pathologises them. Perhaps a more honest approach would be to assist these men to examine and reject attitudes that condone sexual violence, while acknowledging that on the sociological evidence they are not in fact deviant or abnormal. It may be a tricky path to tread, to depathologise those who rape without condoning or excusing their harmful behaviour, but it may ultimately be a better way to engage and change sexual violence perpetrators.