Exit Examination for Sexual Offenders

Sexual offender treatment has a large educational, as well as therapeutic, component. An exit examination was devised to measure retention of knowledge gained by the offender during the course of a community-based treatment program. The exit examination, which signifies transition from a 3 hr-per-week 2-year therapy program to a once-per-month follow-up program, was structured to sample the domain of the offender's new learning. The sample was culled from elements of six major topic categories—relationships, judgment, understanding of feelings, identification of appropriate and inappropriate control techniques, recognition of damage done by victimizing behaviors, and recognition of patterns of deviance — in order to provide the therapist with an understanding of how much information was supplied to and retained by the offender. In addition, two other topic categories — thinking errors and tactics to avoid change — were addressed in their entirety in the examination because of their importance in providing an external view of the offender's recognition and recall of his ways of thinking that contributed to his deviance.