Therapeutic activities towards sex offenders in prison

Abstract

The authors of the article present the implementation of their own therapeutic programme addressed to child sexual offenders serving a sentence in Rawicz Prison. Main theoretical assumptions of the programme based on behavioural and cognitive paradigm and social learning theory, also specific factors of sexual offences risk have been described.
Phenomena important for the course of the therapy indicated by experience include social attitude towards sexual offenders, significance of selection criteria for meetings participants and context of induced impact, motivation to treat offenders, dynamics of a group process and difficulties resulting from the objectivisation of effects of the therapy employed.
Abstinence from deviant behaviours, violating legal norms, while being imprisoned, is obligatory, which narrows down the evaluation and analysis of conscious control of behaviour. Due to such reasons, attention is drawn to the significance of the identification and analysis of indirect indices of effectiveness of therapeutic and rehabilitation impact.