The experience of professionals working with sex offenders: Literature review

Working with sex offenders can be challenging for professionals. Psychotherapy and counseling involve human and emotional commitment that can be demanding. However, supporting sexual offenders seems to confront professionals to specific difficulties, the most obvious being the violent content of patients' speech and the professional duty to balance justice and care. Beyond that, it appears essential to understand specifically what is at stake for professionals in this type of work, but for the well-being of caregivers and patients as well, and ultimately for the quality of the therapeutic alliance. The objectives of this article are to conduct a review of the international scientific literature of studies that have explored the experiences of professionals who work with sex offenders, and to draw practical perspectives as well as new lines of research. Quantitative studies have focused on specific traumatic effects of professional practice with sexual offenders: secondary traumatic stress, burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue. Research has operationalized these different indicators but these concepts have relatively blurred boundaries. Thus, the results do not appear significant on a specific traumatic effect. However, these studies show/prove the existence of a number of symptoms among caregivers - hypervigilance, emotional fatigue, and feeling of depersonalization - highlighting the importance of exploring qualitatively the experience of professionals. Qualitative studies have provided a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. They confirm and clarify the negative emotional impact but also underline positive effects, especially a strong sense of social responsibility, in protecting the population from potential violence. Professionals also focus on professional training opportunities offered within this challenging domain. The most important objective would be to find a balance between positive and negative impacts, bringing out the importance of personal coping strategies and professional resources. These results emphasize the role of institutions in assisting professionals, especially in regards to organizing regular and adapted clinical supervision, in order to provide emotional support. This questions the possibility - and the limit? - about taking into account the personal repercussions of the practice in the professional context. It thus appears fundamental to consider and develop specific organizational support for professional practices with a strong emotional impact. Finally, this literature review raises the interest of developing French research on the experiences of professionals who work with sexual offenders, in order to enrich this international vision while exploring the French specificities of this practice.(c) 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.