Prison sex-offender treatment programme

Domain II · Behavioural & cognitive · 1992 · England and Wales

Historical or harm account: this guide describes what happened and how to recognise it. It is not a practice to implement.

What it is

Historical account. This tab describes a programme that has been withdrawn. It is not a treatment guide. It sets out what the programme involved, how it may have caused harm, how its components can still show up in practice, and what replaced it.

Format

• This is a typical course as described in the sources. Session-by-session manual content was not available and is not reproduced. Where the order of components is inferred, it is marked.
• Ievins met dozens of men held beyond tariff while waiting for courses. One man refused a move to open conditions said the only thing missing from his plan was "Just the SOTP". Stanbury describes a client who maintained his innocence and was refused release because he had not done SOTP. He was freed…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Version followed: the prison-based Core Sex Offender Treatment Programme (Core SOTP) of HM Prison Service, later NOMS and then HMPPS, in England and Wales. It was accredited in 1992 and withdrawn in 2017. The account mainly describes the programme as delivered to the men in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) impact evaluation, who started between 2000 and 2012 (Mews, Di Bella & Purver, 2017). It also refers to the…
• Who developed and ran it. HM Prison Service designed it as a national, multi-site, cognitive-behavioural group programme. The Prison and Probation Services Joint Accreditation Panel, later CSAAP, accredited it for prison use in 1992. Its early content was closely modelled on programmes in other jurisdictions. Trained prison staff delivered it as facilitators: psychologists, psychology assistants, officers and…
• How it was sold to prisoners, referrers and decision-makers. Core SOTP went into men's sentence plans as the accredited route for addressing sexual offending risk. For men serving indeterminate sentences, completing the plan could decide whether they were released. For men on determinate sentences, it was presented as a way to ease licence conditions. Ievins calls this "hard incentivisation": men experienced the…

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• 12. Interim revisions (2015). From 2015 the programme moved away from developing empathy for past victims and towards preventive strategies. Men were encouraged to identify and take responsibility for the risk factors behind their offending, instead of giving detailed offence accounts in the group.…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.