The Lowest Bidder Isn’t Always the Best Choice for Public Safety
At sentencing, most people convicted of a sexual offense are ordered to participate in therapy as a condition of release. In many jurisdictions, the therapist is not chosen by the individual, nor by any careful assessment of therapeutic compatibility. Instead, treatment providers are often selected through government contracts, with probation offices referring participants to whichever program was the lowest bidder.
If the goal is merely checking a box, perhaps that system is sufficient. But if the goal is reducing recidivism and improving public safety, it raises an uncomfortable question: Are we prioritizing effective treatment, or simply the cheapest treatment?
A new study from the Université de Montréal suggests that the patient/therapist relationship is extremely relevant. Researchers followed 140 men who had committed sexual offenses against minors for five to eight years after treatment. The single most important factor associated with the success of treatment was not the participant’s stated motivation to change. It was the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist — a concept known as the “therapeutic alliance.”
The study found that participants who developed stronger therapeutic relationships showed greater reductions in the distorted thinking patterns often associated with offending behavior. More importantly, those stronger therapeutic relationships were linked to lower rates of recidivism after treatment ended. Trust, openness, collaboration, and the ability to receive feedback without feeling attacked emerged as critical components of successful treatment.
For decades, public policy has largely been driven by the assumption that harsher restrictions, broader registries, and more intensive supervision are the keys to public safety. Yet this research points to something far more human: people are more likely to change when they develop a meaningful therapeutic relationship with someone who treats them as a person rather than a label.
The researchers specifically warned against reducing individuals to terms such as “sex offender” or “child molester.” According to the study, when people are viewed only through the lens of their worst act, it can undermine the very therapeutic process that is supposed to reduce future risk. The researchers emphasized that acknowledging a person’s humanity does not minimize the seriousness of the offense. Rather, it creates the conditions necessary for meaningful rehabilitation. We’ve heard from hundreds of members. Some had positive experiences from treatment. Others were traumatized from the berating and dehumanizing.
If society genuinely wants fewer victims, then it should be interested in what actually works. Numerous studies over the years have found that appropriate treatment can reduce recidivism. The question is whether we are investing in treatment that is effective or treatment that is merely available. A therapist who is engaged, experienced, and capable of building trust may help a client identify and challenge harmful thinking patterns. Even a well-meaning therapist who is overworked, undertrained, or simply trying to process a large caseload under a low-cost government contract may struggle to accomplish the same thing. And then there are the ones that are straight harmful.
Therapy should not be punishment. Public safety is often invoked to justify increasingly punitive policies. Yet studies like this remind us that public safety is not achieved through punishment. It is achieved when people leave treatment less likely to reoffend than when they entered it. If we are serious about preventing future crimes, the cheapest option may not be the safest one.
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Well rest assured that with ITM, the company that provides most of the treatment for people on the registry in Florida the companies mission statement was “ are you paying today” seems like 50 percent of the class was payroll recorded keeping, the other half was some fallacy of the foreign originated concept called “the good lives model”.
If you actually point out the inconsistency of the goal of the good lives model and the goal of the Florida legislative body how they go out of there way to successfully do everything they can do make your transition as punitive as possible and how they are mutually exclusive at no point can you possibly live a good life if you have to live in fear of the next town meeting next legislative session next anything because the registry is purely civil, so for instance, if I enjoy walking somewhere or eating somewhere are just going somewhere and they get a wild hair up their ass and say we wanna stop these people from doing it what gave me a form healthy outlet now I’m forbidden from doing that under the guise of public safety. There so called years of experience and my thousand of dollars in “therapy” said that they took simply told me to “move out of Florida”
To what end? Are we are supposed to move around aimlessly like some beaten dog going from place to place hoping that this new place will be more opening than the previous place? If you see that counties are going to 2,500 feet here even though the state is 1,000 you see other states are adding no pools to their town proximity restrictions you see that others states say even though our state is only 10 years your state is a death so so no getting off for you if you move here. Even if the pasture of that state is green now you don’t know what the future holds. Vermont and Oregon Washington might be the states to live right now but in 10 years from now, who’s the say? cause of registry civil they can do whatever the fuck they want.
How can a company provide therapy to an individual that it doesn’t provide any services, don’t provide any resources to the individuals that are in there. And most importantly it doesn’t advocate for people on the registry.
How do you provide therapy to a group of individuals who rest of society seems like it perfectly ok to never let us rebuild our support structure. If the goal is progression into society like jail focuses on. Why is the goal of the legislature branch actively pushing us further and further away from support systems?
The goal of therapy is to heal or improve oneself and be rehabilitated. If you get a meaningless piece of paper from ITM it doesn’t do you any good. You can’t take it to the sheriff office to get off the registry.
You can’t take it to the legislature to prove that you’re now a person like everyone else is. You can’t take the ITM rehabilitation paper to the judge to get your felony charge reduced so what’s the point of therapy if you’re on the registry?
How do you provide therapy to people who will be punished more harshly than the day prior. It’s the only crime the longer your on it the more disproportionate the charge is after the fact, than the original crime.
“The researchers specifically warned against reducing individuals to terms such as “sex offender” or “child molester.” According to the study, when people are viewed only through the lens of their worst act, it can undermine the very therapeutic process that is supposed to reduce future risk.”
I remember watching a case on the I.D channel where a PFR had committed another sexual offense. When the police tracked him down it led into a standoff. When they eventually apprehended him, they asked him why he raped another woman. His response was “because society has labeled me a monster, then I’ll be what you say I am.” I completely condemn his crime, but there’s some truth to what he said.
An otherwise-great article that takes an unfair swipe at the Probation Office.
Are we saying that Probation Offices, unlike other government agencies, are wrong to consider cost? That they don’t consider qualifications? That they don’t worry about re-offense risk of the people under their watch?
C’mon guys.
so,so glad for this post.
I feel if society learned about the goals of court appointed therapy,
like, the things we learned that we didn’t know, that we needed to know,
it would show society that therapy works.
things,
we hopefully learned and apply to this day, In our lives.
I freely share on a need to know basis, the many things I was taught, and how it helps me to this day.
maybe, we could get father away from the mindset of, once an offender, always an offender.
like once an alcoholic, always?
I know folks who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind.
I could go on and on about the many benefits of group therapy and being honest.
I was forced into so called “treatment” as a condition of my federal supervised release, but I was eventually kicked out of the program for not cooperating. I witnessed how the provider and US Probation office were working hand-in-hand to create violations against people in the group sessions where none really existed, and how they collaborated on questions for their contracted polygraph examiners to ask. I distinctly remember one very ethical polygraph examiner who refused to make me take an exam once because the treatment provider and probation officer designed questions that would make an examinee fail. As the examiner put it, they would then use the “failed” polygraph as a basis to create a situation to send people back to prison. It’s called stat-based policing, which means they justify their work (and their pay) by creating violations that don’t actually exist. The treatment provider also tried to get me to lie in individualized sessions; he wanted me to say that I had been violated as a child by my father so that I could “come to terms with my crimes.” He said the probation officers would understand and go easy on me if I did that. I was eventually kicked out of treatment and brought up on a false charge of violating my supervised release conditions because I refused to lie. The judge tossed out the charge because maintaining one’s innocence is a First Amendment right. Over the course of ten years on federal supervised release, I passed every legitimate polygraph they gave me (more than 20 individual exams) — including the one called “Specific Issue” about me being actually innocent of the CP charge against me. I complied with all their requirements and finally got an honest and professional PO who went forward with a request to the court to terminate my supervision early (without completing the “treatment” from the lowest bidder). What did the court do? He granted the request and terminated my supervision early, but he sealed that part of the record from public view. Little did he know that the probation officer gave me a copy of the Order for my records.
There’s no such thing as a “legitimate” polygraph. All polygraphs are simply interrogations conducted to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion. Polygraphs are not lie detectors, nor can they ever be.
Polygraph conclusions aren’t pre-determined. Only polygraph questions are pre-determined. The answers are controlled by you.
Dustin,
When I said “legitimate” in describing court ordered and probation office supervised polygraph testing, I meant that the examiner would develop his own questions in a “legitimate” test rather than being fed questions by a probation officer and treatment provider that teamed up to make examinees fail. I thought that was clear in my previous post. I apologize if it wasn’t. Let me be perfectly clear in this comment: After the US Probation Office and ITM treatment provider were caught rigging the tests by an ethical examiner in my situation, that examiner and the others that followed developed their own questions for monitoring and specific issue purposes. I passed each one of them in more than 20 occasions of being tested over the course of a decade on supervised release. This is the difference between a rigged system designed to make one fail (and potentially never get off supervision or worse, being sent back to prison) and a system where the examinee has the opportunity to take a fair test administered by an ethical examiner. Faced with my clean polygraphs and compliance, the US Probation Office made a very unusual and extremely rare decision at that time to go forward and ask the sentencing judge to immediately terminate my LIFE sentence of supervised release. Imagine being that judge: You sentence a guy who maintains his innocence to federal prison and a LIFE term of supervised release, only to be met 10 years later with a request from your own probation officer to terminate the supervision immediately because the defendant proved himself to be truthful in government issued polygraph sessions AFTER being kicked out of the ITM group. I can only guess this deeply embarrassed the court and that is why the judge sealed my patterns of success from the public record. This is the rigged system I routinely criticize, and for good reason.
After a long time of enduring the horrible therapy company I was sent to by probation, whose goal was apparently to keep you in it indefinitely for profit, I researched other providers in my part of the state and found a private one that I switched to who got me graduated in no time. Best move I could have made.