For 20 years, Dean DeVries has provided services to sex offenders and individuals with developmental disabilities in state hospitals, correctional facilities, outpatient clinics, Day Training & Habilitation programs, and group homes. He helped develop treatment programs and trained staff at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Stillwater and the Psychopathic Personality Treatment Program at St. Peter. For over a decade Dean provided Sex Offender Evaluation’s for the court in Washington County, and Community Risk Assessments for the Social Services/Developmental Disabilities Division in Hennepin County. Because of his experience with both sex offenders and individuals with disabilities, Dean was originally asked by Hennepin County social workers to develop a treatment approach for very serious developmentally disabled sex offenders who had been unsuccessful in established treatment programs. Just as therapists working with adolescents learned a decade earlier, Dean discovered that treatment must come out of the therapy office, into the client's home, and out to the client's community. He developed a treatment model that emphasized integrating the client's caregivers into the treatment process, as well as a commitment to community safety, and the need to provide natural reinforcers and consequences to motivate and teach clients. With this approach, recidivism rates were noticeably low, with only three misdemeanors since 2001. Because of the ongoing success of the treatment program, Dean was eventually given contracts by Hennepin County and Olmsted County

to expand the work of the Safety Center.