1. Research Purpose

This study involves a comprehensive examination of how current sex offender treatment programs in Korea are administered, which will subsequently contribute to developing treatment programs for sex offenders. Many sex offender treatment programs, particularly their manuals, were developed without an empirical research on analyzing how previous treatment programs had been administered.
The limitation of such an approach was that sex offender treatment programs or their manuals did not reflect the specific situations of clinical settings where treatment services were delivered.
Additionally, since there was no comprehensive research that reported the specific situations of sex offender treatment scenes, sex offender treatment programs have been run without full consideration about the establishment of related legal procedures, distribution of human and physical resources and sophistication of clinical work.
In order to complement the limitation of such an approach, this study conducted an archival analysis with sex offender treatment program reports and in-depth interview with sex offenders who participated in treatment programs recently (2010-2011) and therapists who provided group therapy for sex offenders.
Particularly, such research was expected to contribute to identifying what strengths and deficits the current programs have and what kind of improvements should be made. Ultimately, this research was expected to contribute to developing the future sex offender treatment programs that are differentiated with the existing treatment programs.

2. Research Method

1) Archival analysis of program reports
We collected the 28 final reports of sex offender treatment programs that were provided in community and in prison. In general, the collected final reports of sex offender treatment programs were divided into three sections: 1-general characteristics of treatment programs 2-treatment components 3- program improvements. A codebook and a coding manual for analyzing the collected program final reports were developed. For the codebook, a preparatory codebook was developed first and used to do preliminary coding. After having made several revisions on the preparatory codebook based on the problems derived from the preliminary coding work, a final version of the codebook was decided. Coding manual listed the operational definitions of all coding variables and served as a reference material to maintain reliability among coders.
The first coding of final program reports was made using the developed codebook and coding manuals, which included the basic labling of general treatment characteristic of program, identification of the treatment components such as topics and subtopics and the specific activities that were made in each topic. The second-cycle coding focused on identifying the domains based on the topics and subtopics, which were finalized into 10. The ten domains included motivation to participating, admission of offense and taking responsibility for it, correction of cognitive distortions, improving self-concept and interpersonal skills, sex education, emotion issues, empathy toward victims, relapse prevention, wrap-up of the program, and others. Additionally, program improvements specified in the program reports were summarized and categorized into the upper domains.

2) In-depth interview
In-depth interview was made with program participants and therapists. 11 therapists were interviewed who have good experiences of providing group therapy with adult sex offenders. In-depth interview mainly consisted of asking 1-qualifications and clinical experiences of each therapist 2-their perceptions about the treatment process of group therapy 3-their perceptions about the effectiveness of the program and suggestions for the improvement of program.
45 adult sex offenders aged 20-50 who had participated in sex offender treatment program within the recent 2 years and who were considered self-expressive were interviewed. In-depth interview for program participants mainly consisted of asking 1-motivation to participating in treatment program and perception about the necessity of program 2-satisfaction about the participated program and the level of participation 3-perceptions about therapists 4-perceptions about the effectiveness of the program 5-suggestions about the program to be improved. The raw-data that were collected through the in-depth interview were analyzed in a both quantitative and qualitative manner depending on the nature of the data.

3. Results

The research findings that were identified through the qualitative analysis of the 28 sex offender treatment program reports were as follows. In communitybased treatment, the averaged program duration was about 2 months and the averaged participants of one group was 5 persons. The averaged session duration was about 3 and 1/2 hours and the average treatment sessions were 12.
The averaged total hours of a program were 40 hours. For treatment components, domains that were covered in a highest rate were ones about correction of cognitive distortions, admission of offense and taking responsibility for it, relapse prevention, improving empathic ability toward victim. In prison-based treatment, the averaged program duration was 4.7 weeks which was smaller than the average of community-based programs, while the averaged participants were 11 persons, which was 2 times higher than the average of the community-based programs. The noteworthy thing is that in prison-based programs, domains dealing with admission of offense and taking responsibility for it were covered in an only 7.5% rate, which was significantly lower than the average rate of 17.2% that was covered in the community-based program. On the other hand, in the community-based program, domains dealing with self-concept and interpersonal skills were covered in an only 7.7%, which was significantly lower than the average rate of 21.1% of the prison-based programs.
The suggested improvement in the program reports included more time investment for establishing the initial rapport between therapist and participants, strengthening therapists' professionalism and qualification, increasing program duration to warrant sufficient change and program effectiveness. Regarding program content, it was suggested that more various activities enabling dynamics between participants in a group are needed and sessions dealing with offense admission and coping skills with stressors and interpersonal skills are more strengthened.
Based on the analysis of in-depth interview with therapists, the research findings were as follows. Although each individual therapist has different reasons about starting to work as a sex offender therapist, he/she reportedly maintained a perspective differentiating an offense from an offender. Regarding the clinical stress resulting from working with sex offenders, the most frequently addressed one was sex offenders' resistance against participating in treatment programs. In order to deal with such stressors, they suggested that they desperately needed external support such as supervisors, teammates or colleagues. Although many therapists addressed that sex offender treatment programs are effective just as they exist, some interviewees argued that it is too early to assert that sex offender treatment program produce the desired effect in Korea at present because of several problems in its administration. Suggestions from the therapists to solve those problems included strengthening the external support from supervisors, teammates, colleagues, increasing monitoring opportunities between therapists and training programs such as workshop and conferences, developing treatment program manuals specially focused on low functioning sex offenders and increasing treatment length.
Based on the analysis of in-depth interview with participants, the research findings were as follows. 38% of participants said that they had low level of motivation to participation in the treatment program. Regarding their perceptions about program contents, interviewees said that sessions dealing with psychodrama, role-play, and victim empathy were most impressive and beneficial. In case of the psychodrama, it was very helpful to understand other participants' minds, express what they wish to say, increase their confidences in self-expression which contributed to changing personality for some offenders. The session where they were most resistant to be engaged was one about addressing their sexual offenses. The specific reason for it was reportedly that the way that therapists ask about the offense was too coercive and negative feelings such as shame and anger were elicited while accounting the offense.
About 58% of interviewees addressed that they felt participating for treatment program necessary, while 33% of them did not. When asked about how engaging their participation was, about 31% of interviewees answered they were not very much engaged in the program. Regarding the satisfaction about the program, about 38% of interviewees answered they were not very much satisfied with the program. In a summary, these research findings suggest that approximately 30% of participants were low in motivation to program participation, perceptions about its necessity and satisfaction about the completed program. Improvements for the program that were suggested by participants were overlapped with what were addressed by therapists and from the analysis of program reports. Discussions with the research findings and suggestions for policymakers were made.