FARMINGTON, Mo. -- The Missouri Department of Mental Health has a program that it believes cures sex offenders -- keeps them from committing more sex offenses.  The sex offender rehabilitation program seems to be more effective than efforts in other states, where sex offenders often commit more sex crimes after getting out of prison.

  Missouri has nearly 7,000 people listed on its sex offender registry.  Each of them are sentenced to the rehab program but it turns out that not all of them are required to complete it.

   “Dateline NBC” has become famous in the last couple of years for stings of men trolling for sex with underage kids over the Internet.  In the stings, a reporter confronts the trollers and law officerrs arrest them.

  Long before these stings showed up on TV, that was exactly how convicted sex offender Chris Brown was caught.

  “Looking back on it now, I realize I had ulterior motives,” said Brown, a graduate of the sex offender rehabilitation program.

  His motives drove him to a park to meet a 14-year-old girl.  Instead, court documents show, he met the Livingston County sheriff.

  “Looking back at it, I feel a lot of guilt about it,” he said.

  Brown says his guilt isn't over getting caught.  It's thanks to a rehabilitation program.

  “Some people turn to alcohol and drugs.  I turned to the Internet and soliciting -- that type of thing,” said Brown.

  The program at Farmington Correctional Facility really is like a rehab program.  In a school-like setting, offenders learn how their crime affected their victim, life coping skills, and ways to identify if they're at risk of committing another crime.

  “This is treatment that works and we have a very good success rate,” said David Stephens, director of the Department of Mental Health.

  The program boasts that 96 percent of its graduates haven't reoffended three years after their releases; and 94 percent haven’t reoffended after 10 years.

  However, not every sex offender in Missouri finishes the program.

  “Offenders in Missouri are sentenced to the program and it’s their choice to attend the program or not,” said Michael Mitchell, director of Sex Offender Services.

  The Missouri Department of Correction says, in 2006, only 77 percent of sex offenders sentenced to the program finished the first phase and, of those, only 61 percent completed the second phase.

  “We have a great opportunity to provide them with a chance to reshape their lives so that the people around them when they get out will feel safer,” said Stephens.

  Brown says he understands why some people may not finish.

  “When I first went in it, I hated everybody I was around but I came to realize all of us had the same issues and, because of those issues, we're pretty much the same,” said Brown.

  He thinks the program helped him. He believes he is no longer a threat to society.

  “I don't believe I am but I always have to take that into consideration so I make sure I do not become one in the future,” he said.

  Brown was able to get out of prison on parole because he graduated from the program.  But, if someone does not finish the program, that just means he has to serve the whole term of his sentence.