Bringing "good lives" to life: Applying social therapy to working with sexual offenders

With a resurgence of interest and enthusiasm over recent decades in the field of offender rehabilitation, there has been a great deal of emphasis on refining the content of programs and enhancing their implementation. A number of writers and researchers have now begun to shift attention from content and procedural matters to those surrounding the process and context of change (see, for example, Marshall et al., 2003). Many of these authors have drawn attention to the centrality of client readiness for treatment and engagement in programs. Alongside this, the promotion of strengths-based values and the consideration of legitimate client preference are seen as necessary complements to deficit identification and risk management. With the growing realization of these influences on therapeutic alliance and behavioral change, I argue in this chapter that it is timely to reconsider the nature of the arrangements used to bring about rehabilitative change. I suggest that the new constructive approaches require therapeutic modalities that can support and realize them.