Abstract
Published and unpublished data from nine studies on juvenile sexual offender treatment effectiveness were summarized by meta-analysis (N=2986, 2604 known male). Recidivism rates for sexual, non-sexual violent, non-sexual non-violent crimes, and unspecified non-sexual were as follows: 12.53%, 24.73%, 28.51%, and 20.40%, respectively, based on an average 59-month follow-up period. Four included studies contained a control group (n=2288) and five studies included a comparison treatment group (n=698). An average weighted effect size of 0.43 (CI=0.33–0.55) was obtained, indicating a statistically significant effect of treatment on sexual recidivism. However, individual study characteristics (e.g., handling of dropouts and non-equivalent follow-up periods between treatment groups) suggest that results should be interpreted with caution. A comparison of odds ratios by quality of study design indicated that higher quality designs yielded better effect sizes, though the difference between groups was not significant.
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Notes
Although the Walker et al. (2004) study included unpublished data for some treatment outcomes, it did not include unpublished data using recidivism as an outcome.
Information regarding gender and age were unavailable in one study, gender information was incomplete in another study, and information about race was unavailable in two studies.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank undergraduate research assistants, Michael Cowley and Christina Holley, for their respective contributions to this project, and express our sincere appreciation to those individuals who were instrumental in allowing us access to their unpublished data sets, without which this study could not have been conducted.
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This paper is based on a dissertation written for the completion of a Doctor of Philosophy degree in clinical psychology at Florida State University. The dissertation was awarded the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers’ (ATSA) Graduate Research Award in 2005, with results presented at the 2005 ATSA con- ference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Lorraine R. Reitzel is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
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Reitzel, L.R., Carbonell, J.L. The Effectiveness of Sexual Offender Treatment for Juveniles as Measured by Recidivism: A Meta-analysis. Sex Abuse 18, 401–421 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11194-006-9031-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11194-006-9031-2