Washington ? Convicted sex offenders can be forced to confess to their past crimes as part of a prison’s rehabilitation program, despite the Constitution’s ban on forced self-incrimination, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the sex abuse treatment programs used in the Kansas prison system.

The programs require the prisoners some of whom have proclaimed their innocence to admit in detail to every sex offense they have committed during their lives. They are also given polygraph tests to check to see if they are telling the truth.

“Acceptance of responsibility is the beginning of rehabilitation,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court’s majority.

Kennedy pointed to a Justice Department study, which found that only about 15 percent of prisoners who complete the sex-abuse treatment are arrested again for sex crimes.

Those inmates who refuse to participate in the treatment lose privileges, such as having a television set, and they can be sent back to a maximum security block. But the court described these as minimal punishments.

Kansas officials say they reserve the right to prosecute inmates for new sex crimes that they admit during the treatment program.

Nonetheless, Kennedy concluded the program “does not compel prisoners to incriminate themselves in violation of the Constitution.”

The four dissenters, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, accused the majority of ignoring “a bedrock constitutional right.” The government cannot punish anyone for refusing to confess, they said, even prisoners.

Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined the dissent.

Lawyers for 18 other states joined in support of Kansas, saying they had similar programs.

The ruling dealt a defeat to Robert Lile, who was convicted of raping and kidnapping a high school student in 1983. He claimed the girl got in his car on her own accord and their encounter was consensual, but a jury disagreed.

A few years before he was scheduled to be released, prison officials ordered him to participate in the Sexual Abuse Treatment Program. He was required to complete a sexual history form, and sign an “Admission of Responsibility.”

Lile refused, claiming the requirement violated his rights under the Fifth Amendment. It says, “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

Since Kansas said it would prosecute inmates who revealed past sex crimes against minors, a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver said the state could not punish Lile for remaining silent and refusing to cooperate.

Disagreeing in McCune vs. Lile, the Supreme Court said the Fifth Amendment need not be interpreted so rigidly.

“If the state had to offer immunity (to uncooperative inmates such as Lile), the practical effect would be that serial offenders … would be given a windfall for past bad conduct,” Kennedy said.