Police Officers Understandings of Sex Offender Risk Management in England and Wales

• In Event: Policing in Europe

Abstract

This paper will discuss and examine police officer understandings of and attitudes to the risk posed by known sex offenders in the community and the risk assessment tools used to help manage them. This paper will focus on police officer perspectives of the Active Risk Management System [ARMS] recently introduced in England and Wales which is an under researched area in the management of sexual offenders in the UK. The research adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining an online questionnaire survey (n = 227) with series of semi-structured interviews (n = 27) with serving police officers working in sex offender management in England and Wales. The study found that police officers believed that ARMS was a more effective risk management tool than those previously used as it is dynamic and enables more useful information to be captured from offenders themselves allowing risk to be more accurately measured. Officers also suggested that it enables risk to be re-classified and provides clear justification for doing so empowering officers to use evidence and discretion in the management of sex offenders. Despite such benefits officers also identified that it is very time consuming process, needs streamlining and to be used less often.

Author

• James Hoggett, University of the West of England, Bristol. UK