1. The sex offender is different from most psychotherapy clients. Therapists who work with offenders must be networked with the criminal justice system in order to impose sufficient external controls to prevent reoffending while educating the offender to utilize internal controls. The Highland Institute - Atlanta has developed that network over many years of collaboration with U.S. and Georgia probation officers and the criminal justice system.
2. It is essential that any therapist who works with this population be highly trained and have specialized knowledge regarding criminal thinking errors, sexually abusive and exploitative behaviors, appropriate sexuality, and limit-setting, as well as the ability to counter domination, manipulation, anger, depression, self-defeating behaviors, and other control tactics of the offender.
3. Therapists at The Highland Institute - Atlanta have been trained to recognize offender dynamics and to confront the offender in a way that will elicit change in his behavior. To undertake offender treatment without specialized training and skill increases risk to the community and creates a high probability of reoffense. All therapists are licensed in their respective fields, members of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, and receive continuing training education.
4. The Highland Institute - Atlanta is dedicated to community protection through treatment to reduce potential for reoffense.
   
    

DEDICATED PROFESSIONALS

Our staff is actively dedicated to employing evidence-based practices in order to achieve optimal outcomes. We know that quality research and analysis inform effective risk assessment, which in turn guides decision making. Our treatment approach brings together the offender, professional community supervision and treatment services using a collaborative approach, with the mutual goals being decreased recidivism and increased public safety.
Our Director of Forensic Services, Kevin Baldwin, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a dual emphasis on research and forensics. Read his chapter on  Sex Offender Risk Assessment written for and published by the SMART Office, a division of the United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
 

THE HIGHLAND INSTITUTE TREATMENT MODEL

This community-based treatment program uses a cognitive-behavioral restructuring approach to change deviant sexual behavior. A team approach to treatment is utilized in order to establish continuous communication and monitor progress.
 

TREATMENT GOALS

1. Reduce risk to the community.
2. Recognize the damage deviance has caused victims, family, him or herself, and the community.
3. Accept responsibility for his or her sexual aggression.
4. Uncover his or her pattern of deviant behavior and learn to control it.
5. Recognize that the repetitive and compulsive nature of deviant behavior will always be a part of him or her, and he or she must always maintain control of fantasies and behaviors.
6. Develop techniques to disrupt any deviant thoughts or fantasies before they become deviant behaviors.
7. Prevent relapse.

EVALUATION

1. Risk to the community is assessed by an objective sex offender evaluation that for males includes measured arousal patterns.
2. Objective testing is crucial for treatment and planning as well as for recommendations regarding criminal cases.
3. No individual is accepted into treatment without evaluation. Evaluation does not guarantee acceptance into the treatment program.