Examines the scope and likely impact of the new generation of sex-offender treatment programs and concludes that heightened optimism may be premature. Throughout the 1980s, sex-offender treatment programs proliferated in state prisons in the wake of repealed sexual psychopath legislation, driven by much favorable publicity over novel cognitive and behavioral treatment methods. The new programs embody the same defects that the repeal of psychopath legislation was intended to correct. A major problem is that many programs are oriented toward the child molester and offer little for the treatment of the sex offender of adults. The enterprise of sex-offender treatment would benefit from participation of social scientists outside of the treatment field in research on sex offenders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)