Sex offender assessment should gather information from a variety of sources, through various techniques and at various times during each offender's sentence. Assessment generates a wealth of information that can be used to determine the most appropriate treatment intensity and location for each sex offender. The standards describe a range of appropriate treatment techniques. Other treatment goals include learning to appropriately channel anger, loneliness and sadness, understand how others feel, and avoid or cope with high-risk situations. Some of these issues can be dealt with at a cognitive level, but others require treatment that includes a behavioural component.
Group therapy is recommended, but individual therapy is useful for some offenders.
Further, offender motivation often fades after release, so community supervision and maintenance programs are essential. When evaluating program effectiveness, it is important to examine offender risk levels. Risk factors have been shown to correlate with release outcome. It seems more reasonable to define failure as a new violent offence, measured by severity and time to next offence. The more detailed the analysis, the more we will learn from both successes and failures.