Ten violent offenders from the Federal Republic of Germany recidivated immediately after completing their sentences even though they had received psychotherapeutic treatment in a variety of institutions. The recidivism consisted of rapes and murders, all of which had a sexual motivation. Their cases demonstrated the uncertainty of prognostication. However, all had unfavorable prognoses before their release, based on the six parameters of personality disturbance: ego-proximity; determinacy of a sexual deviation; intensity of a sexual deviance; life and personality crises; and the object-relatedness of emotions, impulses, and fantasies when committing an offense. Thus, psychotherapy for prisoners has numerous problems, particularly its occurrence in an environment which does not foster the therapy, the lack of opportunities for guidance for the therapist, and the therapists' reliance on patients' definitions of their problems. Since sexual offenders constitute an extremely heterogeneous group, a three-stage model would be a practical way of differentiating services for them. The model would include pedagogical treatment for those who are stable enough, a social-therapeutic treatment for those who can live within a group, and psychotherapeutic treatment for the most severely disturbed offenders.