Professor Anthony Beech, Head of the Centre for Forensic and Criminological Psychology, School of Psychology, has recently presented (May 16-17th 2013) at an invited experts workshop entitled ‘Developing sexual offender laws and treatment in Europe’ at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Criminal Law in Freiburg Germany. The workshop included 23 invited participants from 12 European countries, including: Germany, Croatia, France, Ireland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the UK.
The title of Professor Beech’s presentation was the ‘Understanding and treatment of sexual offenders in the 21st century: A neurobiological perspective’ and it described the type and effectiveness of the current treatments (i.e., cognitive-behavioural) for sexual offenders. The types of pre, peri, and post-natal neurobiological risk factors that lead people to offend was then outlined. In the final part of the presentation it was argued that other types of therapy (e.g., EMDR, mindfulness, self regulation techniques) to address these problems should be employed as an adjunct to ‘standard’ CBT procedures. The presentation is available from a.r.beech@bham.ac.uk.
Other papers included: the situation regarding sexual offenders in Central, Eastern and South eastern Europe, governing serious offenders, innovative concepts in Western Europe, therapy and control in France, recent developments in Bulgaria and Russia.