The author advises that it is inappropriate to assume that the goal of treatment is the restructuring of the offender's personality. Treatment involves the difficult task of working with a client's environment in order to promote a more receptive milieu that helps modify destructive behavior. "Treatment" can be understood as any purposeful intervention within an ethically bound professional relationship that is directed toward aiding the client in easing some problem in his/her functioning. Many of the abuses of clients' rights in treatment have occurred because helping professionals assumed that all offender clients were psychiatrically disabled patients. Offenders are most often more like the general population as a whole than most are willing to acknowledge. Like most people, they experience the predictable difficulties of adolescence, marriage, ill health, aging, and a range of other kinds of crises that occur to many people. Social workers have the skills to enhance offers' ability to cope with these problems more effectively. This can involve relieving some of the environmental stresses on the offender by intervening with family, employer, mental health or welfare agencies, and other significant institutions. Social workers should not impose helping efforts on offenders who do not see their need for or benefit from intervention efforts. They are responsible, however, for interpreting to all clients the availability of such services and the possibility that the services available can make a significant and positive impact on their lives. 2 references