Author: Robert A. Prentky Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136016643 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 373
Book Description
Convicted sex offenders released from custody at the end of their criminal sentences pose a risk for re-offense. In many US states, Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) laws have been enacted that allow for the post-prison preventive detention of high risk sex offenders. SVP laws require the courts to make dispositions that protect the public from harm while at the same time respecting the civil rights of the offender. This book describes these SVP laws, their constitutionality, and aspects of their operation. Courts hear expert risk testimony based heavily on the results of actuarial risk assessment. Problems associated with this testimony include the lack of a theory of recidivism risk, bias due to human decision-making, and the insularity of scholarship and practice along developmental lines. The authors propose changes in legal standards, as well as a unified developmental model that treats sexual violence as an "evolving" condition, with roots traceable to childhood and paths that extend into adolescence and adulthood.
Author: Amanda Matravers Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134029144 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
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.
Author: John Q. La Fond Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn ISBN: 9781591471721 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
Critiques the current treatment of sex offenders in an effort to determine how best to prevent reoffending without infringing on the rights of citizens. The book offers the latest data about sex offenders and the legal measures enacted to prevent sexual violence.
Author: Monica Williams Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 1479836494 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 287
Book Description
"When a South Carolina couple killed a registered sex offender and his wife after they moved into their neighborhood in 2013, the story exposed an extreme and relatively rare instance of violence against sex offenders. While media accounts would have us believe that vigilantes across the country lie in wait for predators who move into their neighborhoods, responses to sex offenders more often involve collective campaigns that direct outrage toward political and criminal justice systems. No community wants a sex offender in its midst, but instead of vigilantism, [the author] argues, citizens often leverage moral, political, and/or legal authority to keep these offenders out of local neighborhoods. Her book, the culmination of four years of research, 70 in-depth interviews, participant observations, and studies of numerous media sources, reveals the origins and characteristics of community responses to sexually violent predators (SVP) in the U.S. Specifically, [this book] examines the placement process for released SVPs in California and the communities’ responses to those placements. Taking the reader into the center of these related issues, [the author] provokes debate on the role of communities in the execution of criminal justice policies, while also addressing the responsibility of government institutions to both groups of citizens."--
Author: John Q. La Fond Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn ISBN: 9781557989734 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
In Protecting Society From Sexually Dangerous Offenders, legal and mental health experts explore the ramifications of the controversial sexual predator commitment laws, registration and community notification laws, and chemical castration laws that have come into existence in the past dozen years. The increasing number of sex crimes, especially those committed by released sex offenders against young victims, has struck a public nerve. Understandably, citizens are angry, vengeful, and fearful, and they demand both retribution and harsh measures to prevent these kinds of crimes from recurring. These intense public demands for retaliation and protection have shaped recent law and public policy, resulting in involuntary commitment programs, notification laws, and chemical castration laws for sex offenders in many states. These new legal strategies raise serious constitutional questions regarding the rights of those who have served their punishment. Perhaps more important is the question of whether these programs are actually effective in preventing sexual recidivism. In this volume, contributing authors discuss the issues surrounding these new legal strategies and the alternatives to such programs. They examine the wisdom and constitutionality of post-incarceration commitment and the difficulty of determining who is most likely to offend again. Contributors propose alternatives to involuntary commitment, including community containment and programs for treating sexually abused children so as to reduce the chances of them growing up to continue the cycle of sexual abuse. They also propose ways in which these new legal approaches can be applied to increase their therapeutic potential. Psychologists and other mental health experts working with sexually dangerous offenders as well as lawyers, policy makers, and students in these fields will find this to be an indispensable sourcebook on this topic.
Author: Emily Horowitz Publisher: Praeger ISBN: 1440838623 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This thought-provoking work raises important questions about sex offender laws, drawing from personal stories, research, and data to prove the policies promote fear, destroy lives, and fail to protect children. Do sex offender laws protect children, or are they inherently unfair practices that, at their worst, promote vigilante justice? The latter, this book argues. By analyzing the social, political, historical, and cultural context surrounding the emergence of current sex offender policies and laws, the work shows how sex offenders have come to loom as greater-than-life monsters when, in many cases, that is not true at all. Looking at its subject from a fresh viewpoint, the book shares research and new analyses of data and qualitative evidence to show how sex-offender laws are not only ineffective, but engender destructive fear and anxiety. To help readers understand the impact of these laws, the author presents interviews with sex offenders and their families as they describe the day-to-day reality of living on the sex offender registry. Citing research and statistics, the book challenges the idea that sex offenders must be continually monitored and publicly identified because they are incurably predatory. Most important, the study shows that undue sex offender panic is preventing policymakers from addressing the true threats to children—poverty and growing inequality.
Author: Karen Harrison Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131743854X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Sex offenders, and in particular paedophiles, have been the subject of much political and media attention, producing intensive debates about the best way of dealing with them. This book explores these issues, evaluating the measures in use or being considered, including drug treatment, MAPPA, the use of the Sex Offender Register, restorative justice techniques, and treatment programmes. It is concerned with high-risk sex offenders both when they are sentenced to a community order, and also when they are released back into the community after a custodial sentence. The introductory section opens with a discussion on how terms such as paedophilia are constructed and viewed, and then looks at how government policy regarding sex offending has developed over recent years. Section two looks at issues concerned with risk management, questioning whether enough is being done to monitor the risk that high-risk offenders pose when released into society; whilst section three, on risk reduction covers the main methods of treatment, including sex offender treatment programmes, pharmacotherapy (chemical castration) and restorative and reintegration techniques. Section Four focuses on specific offender groups; including female sexual offenders, sexual harm by youth, mentally disordered sexual offenders and intellectual disabled offenders. These assess in what ways these offenders are different to the 'norm' and look at how we should be dealing and treating these differences. The final section looks at social and moral responsibilities, including the patterns, prevention and protection of cyber-sex offences and media constructions of and reactions to paedophilia. In the final chapter the concept of dignity is addressed and the balance between community protection and the rights of sex offenders involved is evaluated.
Author: Diana Rickard Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 0813578329 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
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.
Author: Mike Nash Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136842241 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 684
Book Description
Public protection has become an increasingly central theme in the work of the criminal justice agencies in many parts of the world in recent years. Its high public profile and consequent political sensitivity means that growing numbers of criminal justice professionals find their daily work load dominated by the assessment and management of high risk of harm offenders. Developments such as sex offender registers and (in the UK) Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (Mappa) have made this issue not only a core activity for police, probation and prison services, but to a range of other organizations as well, in particular social work and the health services. Partnership has become central to the concept of public protection. At the same time the concept of public protection has occasioned increased political debate. Protecting the public from high risk or dangerous offenders has become an international issue and has increasingly shaped criminal justice policy. This text brings together leading authorities in the field, providing authoritative coverage of the theory and practice of public protection, both in the UK and internationally. It provides a critical review of contemporary public protection practice as well as up-to-date research and thinking in the field.
Author: Terence W. Campbell Publisher: Charles C Thomas Publisher ISBN: 0398077746 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 377
Book Description
This book reviews the scientific evidence relevant to assessing the recidivism risk of sex offenders, as well as the issues related to sex offenders, in considerable detail. It is not an attempt for creating sympathy for sex offenders. Substantial numbers of psychologists claim they can accurately identify the recidivism risk of sex offenders. Despite the very limited, peer-reviewed data related to these claims, many psychologists insist the scientific evidence supports their efforts in this regard. Too often, the issues detailed in these chapters have been overlooked and/or misinterpreted. As a result, the likelihood of psychologists misusing and abusing scientific data when assessing sex offenders should not be underestimated. This book identifies numerous instances of such misuse and abuse. Topics include: sexually violent person civil commitment statutes, clinical judgment and clinical experience, guided clinical risk assessments, actuarial assessment of recidivism risk, actuarial instruments for assessing recidivism risk, computing classification accuracy, supplementary assessment procedures, adjusted actuarial assessments, diagnostic classification, treating sex offenders, and ethical obligations. Ultimately, however, the book challenges psychologists to recognize and respond to their scientific and professional responsibilities. When testifying as expert witnesses, ethical obligations prohibit psychologists from misinforming and misleading legal proceedings. These same obligations necessitate that psychologists support their opinions with relevant research data.
Author: Robert A. Prentky
Author: Amanda Matravers
Author: John Q. La Fond
Author: Monica Williams
Author: John Q. La Fond
Author: Emily Horowitz
Author: Karen Harrison
Author: Diana Rickard
Author: Mike Nash
Author: Terence W. Campbell