Social Control Of Sex Offenders

This book surveys the history, current status, and critical issues regarding the various mechanisms designed to control sex offenders. It shows that the social problem of sex offending is not apparently resolvable by any of the means currently employed. A large array of procedures are used in the attempt to control the difficult population of sex offenders, including: imprisonment, institutional and community treatment, community monitoring by probation and parole, electronic monitoring, registration as a sex offender, community notification of an offender’s status, strict limits on behavioral movement in the community, and residence restrictions. However, these constraints on behavior are almost completely the result of public outrage regarding sensational sex crimes, overreaction of media coverage that produce inaccurate statements of potential community risk, and the efforts of the legal profession and politicians to quell this anger and foreboding by enacting legislation that supposedly confronts the risk. This book demonstrates that we have constructed a massive edifice of community control that is socially and politically driven and which has largely failed to contain sex crime.

The 1990s witnessed a flurry of legislative initiatives—most notably, “Megan’s Law”—designed to control a population of sex offenders (child abusers) widely reviled as sick, evil, and incurable. In Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control, Diana Rickard provides the reader with an in-depth view of six such men, exploring how they manage to cope with their highly stigmatized role as social outcasts. The six men discussed in the book are typical convicted sex offenders—neither serial pedophiles nor individuals convicted of the type of brutal act that looms large in public perceptions about sex crimes. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control explores how these individuals, who have been cast as social pariahs, construct their sense of self. How does being labeled in this way and controlled by measures such as Megan’s Law affect one’s identity and sense of social being? Unlike traditional criminological and psychological studies of this population, this book frames their experiences in concepts of both deviance and identity, asking how men so highly stigmatized cope with the most extreme form of social marginality. Placing their stories within the context of the current culture of mass incarceration and zero-tolerance, Rickard provides a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between public policy and lived experience, as well as an understanding of the social challenges faced by this population, whose re-integration into society is far from simple or assured. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control makes a significant contribution to our understanding of sex offenders, offering a unique window into how individuals make meaning out of their experiences and present a viable—not monstrous—social self to themselves and others.

Sex offending, and in particular child sex offending, is a complex area for policy makers, theorists and practitioners. A focus on punishment has reinforced sex offending as a problem that is essentially ‘other’ to society and discourages engagement with the real scale and scope of sexual offending in the UK. This book looks at the growth of work with sex offenders, questioning assumptions about the range and types of such offenders and what effective responses to these might be. Divided into four sections, this book sets out the growth of a broad legislative context and the emergence of child sexual offenders in criminal justice policy and practice. It goes on to consider a range of offences and victim typologies arguing that work with offenders and victims is complex and can provide a rich source of theoretical and practical knowledge that should be utilised more fully by both policy makers and practitioners. It includes work on female sex offenders, electronic monitoring and animal abuse as well as exploring interventions with sex offenders in three different contexts; prisons, communities and hostels. Bringing together academic, practice and policy experts, the book argues that a clear but complex theoretical and policy approach is required if the risk of re- offending and further victimisation is to be reduced. Ultimately, this book questions whether it makes sense to locate responsibility for responding to sexual offending solely within the criminal justice domain.

It has been over ten years since the release of the first edition. Over this time span, the dilemmas for the sexual offender - including their visceral and virtual manifestations - have captured the imagination of the public, have rewritten the subdiscipline of behavioral sciences and the law, and have led to new technologies in the assessment, diagnostic, and treatment decision sciences. These dilemmas circulate in the marketplace of conspicuous digital consumerism that stylizes and commercializes the sex offender industry through society’s ubiquitous infotainment-driven and carnival-like outlets. This second edition will act as the antidote to the voyeurism that addictively feeds on the dramatizations that caricature the victims, assailants, and predicaments that constitute the dilemmas for the sexual offender. The authors systematically probe and dissect the boundaries of their topic with erudition and insight. This acumen consists of psychiatric, legal, moral, and bio-social realms of inquiry and analysis. Old questions about the nature of evil, women in society, violence and mental illness, and treatment and recovery receive fresh attention based on the latest empirical evidence. New chapters address emergent forms of deviant sexuality (e.g., cyber-offending, erotic and sadistic psychopathy, and child-molesting clergy). New sections illuminate existing forms of aberrant sexuality (e.g., moral development and necrophilia, moral reasoning and sex offenders, and the psychodynamics of serialized lust murder). This state-of-the-art text, replete with cutting-edge case illustrations, demonstrates how medicine, law, and culture are inextricably (and sometimes inexplicably) bound together. It will serve as an outstanding resource for psychiatrists, lawyers, criminologists, policy analysts, and forensic mental health professionals as the authors expertly reveal the world of sexual offenders.

This book offers a fresh perspective on treating a population that is often demonized by policymakers, the public, and even clinicians. The authors argue that most sex offenders are "people like us," with the potential to lead meaningful, law-abiding lives—if given a chance and appropriate support. They describe an empirically and theoretically grounded rehabilitation approach, the Good Lives Model, which can be integrated with the assessment and intervention approaches that clinicians already use. Drawing on the latest knowledge about factors promoting desistance from crime, the book discusses how encouraging naturally occurring desistance processes, and directly addressing barriers to community reintegration, can make treatment more effective and long lasting.

This highly controversial new book considers how the dangerous offender has become such a figure of collective anxiety for the citizens of rationalised Western societies. The authors consider: * ideas of danger and social threat in historical perspective * legal responses to violent criminals * attempts to predict dangerous behaviour * why particular groups, such as women, remain at risk from violent crime. This inspired collection invites us to rethink the received wisdom on dangerous offenders, and will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of criminology and the sociology of Risk.

Provides comprehensive, even-handed analysis of the myriad of topics related to sex offenses, including pornography, sex trafficking, criminal justice responses, and the role of social media in sex crimes. Extending beyond the existing scholarly research on the topic, this volume teases out the key debates, controversies, and challenges involved in addressing sex crimes.

This book explores current criminal justice responses to the management of individuals who are convicted of sexual offences. It aims to help policy-makers, practitioners and students to develop an informed position on this complex and increasingly controversial issue. Although the focus is primarily upon the UK context, contributions from North America (USA and Canada) provide an important comparative perspective.