Recently, treating sex offenders in Korea became an important issue to reduce their recidivism rates and help them to be integrated into the community. Previous criminal justice policies for managing sex offenders have focused on punishing them and enforcing the community protection from them. However, the fact that all sex offenders are not detected through criminal justice system and many sex offenders who get through the criminal justice agencies return to the community after all have reminded us that a punitive framework alone cannot guarantee protecting the society from sex offense. It has posed the necessity of an alternative approach, being more rehabilitative, that ensure sex offenders to live without any other offenses through their ‘inner changes.’
Psychological treatment has been deemed as an important strategy to achieve it. According to research, psychotherapy can contribute to changing criminogenic factors from sex offenders and thus decrease their likelihood of committing other crimes. Numerous research have shown that psychological treatment such as cognitive behavioral therapy for sex offenders, if implemented in appropriate ways, could contribute to reducing their recidivism rates. Many criminal justice agencies in Korea have enforced the treatment of sex offenders by requiring all sex offenders, once incarcerated in prison, to participate in psychotherapy, increasing the number of treatment centers in correctional facilities that are committed to treating high risk sex offenders and increasing psychotherapy hours for them.
However, the legal regime for overarching sex offender treatment has not been established well, especially in line with findings of research. For example, when court orders sex offenders to complete sex offender treatment at a sentencing phase, it imposes a fixed hours(e.g. 40 hours, 100 hours and so one), but literature does not tell us that the duration of sex offender treatment should be decided at such a stage because it relates to the level of risk and dynamic risk factors that sex offenders have. Therefore, it is, in general, the implementation stage of sentencing that are capable of assessing and measuring sex offenders more accurately and comprehensively when treatment duration is decided. Other than it, there are different legal issuers that need revising to enable sex offender treatment to be implemented more effectively in practical fields. We examined the legal regimes for treating sex offenders in different countries such as Germany, US, UK that have already developed the criminal justice system for treating sex offenders drawing upon the research findings.
First, we reviewed extensive literature on sex offender treatment in general such as history, theory, model, types, effectiveness as well as assessment prior to treating and actual treatment topics. We also examined Korean criminal law relating to the sex offender treatment and pinpointed possible statutory problems that could conflict with research findings. In order to examine what mostly affects judges’ sentencing regarding the duration of sex offender treatment, we conducted a statistical analysis using court decisions that were made during this summer in Korean criminal courts. All the court decisions were imposed to sex offenders who commit either hands-on or hands-off sex offenses and included sex offender treatment order. We found that the duration of therapy hours was solely predicted by the prison terms, and it did not correlate with scores of actuarial scales that could possibly relate to. This suggests that sex offender treatment could be considered another form of punishment rather than treatment itself in Korea.
We also reviewed different legal regimes relating to sex offender and its treatment in Germany, US and UK. Through such comparative examination, we could infer that policy makers in such countries have attempted to refer to research findings extensively and put extra efforts to collaborate between criminal justice agencies and noncriminal justice agencies such as hospitals,mental health facilities inmultidisciplinary ways. All countries provided different statutory routes for treating sex offenders depending on offenders’ psychiatric status, risk level and psychotherapeutic needs. Particularly, German provided a very specific guideline to make a psychiatric and psychosocial assessment at a pre-trial stage. A consortium consisting of professionals of between criminal law and forensic medicine enabled such an establishment of guideline. US(New York and Texas States) provided very specific procedures for determining and implementing civil commitment for sex offenders. UK provide very differentiated SOTP programs for imprisoned sex offenders. In all three countries, intensive probation combined with psychotherapy for sex offenders in community also acted as an important part of community-based treatment.
One of our main themes in current research was to examine the system of aftercare for sex offenders, in an aspect of either psychotherapy or risk management. In all three countries, depending on the status of completion of regular treatment in prison or probation, post-completion psychotherapy, so called booster therapy, was provided in order to maintain therapeutic gains and to prevent relapse. Especially, sex offenders who did not complete regular treatment successfully(in most cases, parole is not allowed to them) were provided with community-based psychological treatment combined with intensive probation.
Finally, we presented different suggestions on changing the criminal justice policies relevant to sex offender treatment in Korea.We posed a therapeutic justice model for addressing sex offender treatment more effectively in Korea. We also provided legislative alternatives to remedy our current criminal statutes. Conclusions were made integrating all the relevant research findings, theories and models as well as discussions and suggestions.