Only 1 in 13 jailed sex offenders completed the course aimed at tackling their offending

[IwantToRetire]

Figures published last week show that 1,098 people completed an accredited offending behaviour programme targeting sexual offending during 2024/25. The number of sentenced prisoners convicted of sexual offences in March 2025 stood at 14,863.

The figures, issued by the Ministry of Justice and covering England and Wales, show that the number of people taking part in sex offending courses in prison has still not recovered to the level seen before the Covid pandemic in 2021, when most courses were suspended due to prisoners being isolated in their cells.

More than half of the sex offenders taking courses were placed on the Horizon programme. The next most commonly used was Kaizen, followed by Healthy Sex Programme.

Article continues at https://insidetime.org/newsround/just-1-in-13-jailed-sex-offenders-took-a-course-last-year/

Are these courses proven to actually work? Do they significantly reduce reoffending rates? The article just calls them accredited, which doesn't necessarily mean effective.

I'm so sceptical that they can work

There's no evidence they work. A waste of time and money,

I dont this that is the point!

They probably are useless, but what this also shows is that in terms of how the authorities thinks prisons should be run aren't actually happening.

And therefore are happy to release prisoners who have not undertaking any sort of rehabilitation.

The issue of which course is another aspect.

I am also skeptical about the efficacy of such courses. IIRC there was a bit of a scandal a while ago where a woman tasked with assessing how well a course used with VAWG inmates raised concerns that it appeared to increase offending - she was disciplined, discredited and sidelined while the course continued to run for years. Eventually (I think after she left and raised her concerns with journalists?) the Prison Service was forced to admit they were problematic and vowed to change them. I understood that these courses rose out of the ashes of that disaster but still have no evidence of being effective.

Unfortunately I agree with (what I think is) your point that rehabilitation is not high on the Prison Service agenda. I don't think it's really that high on the general public's agenda either, so I wouldn't expect much change. Though I think everyone would like society better if we could get to grips with it and do something that worked well.

Rehabilitation isn't high on the general public agenda because many people (like me) don't believe that it can work for sex offenders. (I get that it would be impossible to prove a negative which is why I class it as a belief.)

Unfortunately I agree with (what I think is) your point that rehabilitation is not high on the Prison Service agenda. I don't think it's really that high on the general public's agenda either, so I wouldn't expect much change. Though I think everyone would like society better if we could get to grips with it and do something that worked well.

Yes that was part of the point, but also we (or the authorities) aer alwaus setting up schemes, talk about lessons learned, and then in practice nothing changes. Not just the Prison Service but just about everything, local councils, the NHS, and on and on and on ...

Tru dat

Strange the way the article talks about people. As though "people" of both sexes are being equally imprisoned for sex offences.

My son is a convicted sex offender, currently in remand for breaching his SHPO. He has openly admitted to having a porn addiction that has escalated to extreme images that are illegal. He was groomed as a teenager online into believing he was trans etc…. then hentai…. Then the police burst through my door the week after he turned 18. He’s begged for court appointed porn addiction help/support and nobody wants to do it. He’s actually being released back into the community on Friday as the judge himself said that he’s far from your typical offender with his A* GCSEs abs excellent grades in college etc and being in prison is more likely to create more criminal behaviour. I’ve begged them in a letter to consider a proper porn addiction treatment programme but last time he had to go the probation centre every two weeks. Then they started doing phone calls. Then he had a 6 week “course” on the phone that was completely useless. Within a year from sentencing he was discharged and only had a random 1-2 times a year check by police. The just said they won’t even ban him from the internet as apparently it’s a breach of his human rights and far too extreme to even consider.

My son has not hurt anybody thank God and I don’t think he would but I still take all precautions etc, he’s autistic and has adhd and just ( very unfortunately) has a porn addiction that he was groomed into as a child and nobody will help him. I am honestly at the end of my tether with it all and I’m horrified by the gaps in the system and how offenders are just left to reoffend and that’s that. It’s awful.

It's a huge problem for the prison service (also an issue in education, the NHS, and many other governmental and nonprofit organizations) that new programs are introduced without being properly evaluated. Given the control and size of national state services there really is no excuse. But politicians tend to be statistically illiterate to an alarming degree and far more soaked in ideology. or even just the high of an emotional narrative and the possibility of doing things on the cheap, than in good evidence and robust and methodical evaluation.

Prison program after prison program has been introduced without evaluation, eventually discredited and then replaced with another unevaluated program.

I think part of the issue is that rehabilitation is just hard, and may rely far more on factors the Prison Service has little to no control over than on things they can change.

I'm sorry, this must have been very difficult for you and the whole family.

However, I would strongly disagree that your son "has not hurt anybody".

He's an adult and he needs to take responsibility for the fact he breached his SHPO.

He can find private addiction help services, if he really wants to, rather than blame the probation service.

Your whole post is very minimising and washing your son of all blame, as if this is something that's just happened to him rather than something he's done.

I think that's a bit harsh on someone who has made an honest post about her situation.

If you have a positive suggestion about how to help an autistic male who has been groomed could be helped why not say how.

Without assuming somehas the money.

From PP is seems there aren't any courses or therapy that help.

Perhaps there's nothing that can be done, I don't know, as I say I am very sorry for her.

But saying he hasn't hurt anybody, when he has breached his sexual harm prevention order, is a slap in the face for sexual abuse victims and frankly I care much more about them than a man who'd breach a SHPO.

I'm now double checking I'm on the feminism board.

Edit - nowhere have I ever referred to pp's money. There are volunteer-run services for addicts, including online.

You chose to interpret what I said as supporting a man.

I am talking about supporting a woman.

Yes it is a feminist board, so you dont need to state the bleeding obvious.

What is missing from this forum which it used to have is empathy, instead of standing on soap boxes virture signalling.

This is real life.

This means that women who have children who have been totally transed come or used to come on this board for support.

Ditto here.

(You said "private" services which imply money)

You are accusing me of virtue signalling and I could bat that right back.

I did not attack Green Godiva, and I don't think she needs you flying to her defence. I was civil. I simply said I strongly disagreed with her statement that her sexual offending son has never hurt anyone, especially now he's breached his SHPO and is actually on remand, for which the bar is high.

Feminism, for me, isn't just blindly agreeing with any and every woman. I'm allowed to disagree with someone even if they're a woman.

I have a strong prejudice against sexual offenders, and I'll thank you for believing me when I say it is deeply genuine and not fucking virtue signalling.

And yes. I know sexual offending is "real life", ffs. Do you? Do you think pp's son's crimes are victimless?

Honestly, I'm not sure we will get anywhere with this, I think our views are too different to ever converge.

Edit for spelling errors

@GreenGodiva hi, there is now only 1 programme for all offending behaviour. We are only able to use what is available in the prison and probation service.
Previous posters mentioned a programme that was discredited. That was SOTP.
Also as a side note, many of the sex offenders i worked with were a grade students with very successful careers.
I hope you are ok and i think it was very brave of you to post.

@MumoftwoNC

I’m not minimising anything. I’ve openly spoken about this before in here many times and you can search my name. My son hasn’t physically hurt anybody, the images were hentai. Animations. Anime pornography with fictional animal human hybrids.

I believe you, because why would you not tell the truth on here. But it surprises me because I knew a horrible man, call him X, (friend of a friend of dh's, never liked him and always told dh) who got convicted of using category A images of under 5s and even commissioning them (paying parents to create them) and he never got a custodial sentence.

So my understanding is that the bar for custody is very, very high. So, taken at face value, if someone tells me that Person Y is remanded in custody for breaching a SHPO, then his offences are even worse than X's. Which is perhaps oversimplistic but I'm just explaining the context behind my viewpoint.

I've spoken about X on mumsnet before, many name changes ago. He was (is) a paedophile for babies specifically and very insistently asked to babysit my baby, arguing that my ppd/ppa was the reason why I refused. Thank god I did refuse, we found out a year later in the local news that he had been charged. I shudder to think what he'd have done to my daughter if I'd caved. He also claimed as a mitigation that he had a "porn addiction". He was given a suspended sentence.

So that's (one of) the reasons behind my stance on this. It's illegal for a reason

This discussion goes to show, imo, why this is a complicated issue, and why pornography is such an insidious evil. It's now grooming and warping the sexuality of children, boys, and I think increasingly young girls through text based material.

Kids told that pornography are find and normal, but of course it escalates and becomes a drive that a significant number will find they cannot control.

We have been playing not with fire, but TNT, acting as if the most powerful of all human drives could be treated casually as if it is not potentially dangerous and even uncontrollable when it is warped in the development stage.

I sometimes think back to all the people in the 60s - 90s, trying to argue that sex was natural and fun and people who thought it could be dangerous were just silly prudes.

Sexual offenses are said to have a low reoffending rate but I find this hard to believe, because reporting rates are very low at the same time.

Haven’t rtft but this is my line of work. Treatment programmes are assessed and monitored, current evidence shows they do reduce reoffending. Building Choices is the culmination of the most recent research into ‘what works’ and retains the Risk, Need and Responsivity principles to ensure that people are put on the most appropriate treatment pathway. The reason there are so few completions is the same reason there isn’t enough SEN provision in schools or not enough doctors/nurses etc in the NHS: money. There are plenty of us trying our best with the resources we have available to work with as many offenders as possible, targeting by risk and need, to reduce reoffending.

So the Building Choices program was assessed for efficacy before it was widely implemented? Is that report publicly available?

"The reason there are so few completions is the same reason there isn’t enough SEN provision in schools or not enough doctors/nurses etc in the NHS: money."

Thank you for this comment.

I know somebody who used to work in HMP Bure. Nothing to do with any sort of treatment, but in education.

They very much said the same thing.

There are some offenders who are there for many years but there are very many more offenders who will only be there for a year or two.

For example, consider an offender given a three year sentence. He will spend 50% of that in prison, so that is 18 months (although it may now be less, I don't know if they will qualify for this new 33%).

He will spend at least the first 6 months, if not more, in a local prison (on the VP [vulnerable prisoner] wing). Local prisons don't do any sort of sex offender treatment programmes.

At some point he will be transferred to another prison, either a specialist prison which houses just sex offenders, or another training prison.

When he arrives there he will be assessed and placed on a waiting list for any treatment programmes that the prison offers.

"...to work with as many offenders as possible, targeting by risk and need, to reduce reoffending."

Given that he will have at most 12 months (or as little as 6 months) there before he is released, the team running the treatment progammes will need to decide if they spend their resources on him, or another offender who has been sentenced to a much longer period and is coming up to their release date in the next year or so.

The prison service really is majorly underfunded. My friend told me a bit about how HMP Bure was run. They got the prisoners involved in the kitchens and the gardens (they grew an awful lot of veg themselves that was used in the kitchens).

Just as an aside, there were practical courses like bricklaying which helped them get jobs when they were released.

But again, the numbers that were allowed to do courses like bricklaying were very small. They simply couldn't afford to run courses for more prisoners.

To offend against children I think you need to be extremely high in narcissistic tendencies pretty close to having NPD, at that end of the spectrum. By definition to offend you are low in empathy, poor theory of mind, self centred, incapable of seeing other people’s personhood. Those personality types are incredibly fixed and rigid and that is why they are so hard to treat.