Giacoppe, John Anthony2019-11-072019-11-072019https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25022353 pagesWestern State Hospital is a mental hospital in Steilacoom, Washington. In 1951, on the order of the Washington State Legislature, Western State Hospital began accepting sex offenders as inpatients. In 1958, a treatment program was developed. The program used an iconoclastic form of group therapy, wherein the offenders led their own group sessions without staff present. The program considered sexual offense the most prominent symptom of the offender’s social maladjustment and self-isolation. Therapy sought to have the offenders “teach” each other interpersonal skills, as well as to elucidate individual problems. Under the leadership of Dr. George MacDonald and Robinson Williams, M.S.W., the program developed to a multi-component modality that included work release and couples’ therapy. The program received an increasingly large percentage of the state’s sex offenders through 1975, with little corresponding oversight from the state or the wider academic world. The professional field shifted rapidly toward conditioning therapies in the late 1970’s. The program adopted these new methods slowly. Treatment costs ballooned as staff levels increased to handle the large patient population and the new methods. The public’s fears of escapes, despite their rarity, led to numerous demands that the program be closed to protect the local community. The state eventually sided with the public as costs continued to rise, and the program was formally ended in 1986. Washington replaced the program with the strictest sex-offender laws in the nation.en-USCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USHistorySex OffenderInstitutionSexual AssaultJusticeMilieu TherapyThesis/Dissertation