Managing Sex Offenders in the UK: Challenges for Policy and Practice

• In Event: Advances in Sex Offender Policy Research: Policy Implementation and Impacts

Abstract

The community management of sex offenders has attracted much media and political interest in recent times, not least due to high profile failures in risk management as well as issues both historic (e.g., Welsh Care Home Scandal, the Jimmy Saville case) and contemporary (e.g., the Ian Wakins case)with the policing of sexual offenders. This has resulted in increased policy concern with sex offenders, and practice developments at both the individual practice level and in multi agency working. Community supervision and management of sex offenders, particularly those considered ‘high risk’ was given added impetus in the 1990s and into the 21st century by the ‘discovery’ of the predatory paedophile and various studies that established the extent of sexual offending both nationally and internationally. As a result public, political and media pressure has grown for more restrictive and effective measures for the management of sexual offenders resulting in a ‘community protection’ model. Within the community protection approach legislation prioritises public protection through mandatory, indeterminate and preventative sentencing, and through intensive regulation and surveillance in the community. This paper will review the current approach to managing sex offenders in the UK, consider the key challenges facing policy and practice, and explore emerging alternative approaches within the UK.

Authors

• Kieran McCartan, University of the West of England, Bristol

• Hazel Kemshall, De Montfort University