Comparative Analysis of the Management of Sexual Offenders in the USA and UK (From Violent and Sexual Offenders: Assessment, Treatment and Management, P 257-283, 2009, Jane L. Ireland, Carol A. Ireland, Philip Birch, eds. -- See NCJ-227476)

• NCJ Number: 227487
• Author(s): Bill Hebenton
• Date Published: 2009
• Length: 27 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

A comparative analysis is conducted on the development of controls on sexual offenders released into the community in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Abstract

While the sexual offender has been constructed in both the United Kingdom (England and Wales) and the United States in a broadly similar fashion in terms of public protection, it is in the ways in which the public itself has been constructed in relation to the management of sexual offenders that is particularly instructive. Government in England and Wales, unlike the United States, has sought to keep the public at 'arm's length' and assumes the public as a potential source of risk to expert-led risk management strategies. The public is viewed as irrational about risk and prey to negative media influence. It is clear that at the level of policy style and rhetoric on the management of sexual offenders there is broad convergence, but in terms of policy content and outcomes in the community, there is considerable divergence between the United States and England and Wales. By examining policy interventions in respect of sexual offenders released into the community in the United States, on both the State and Federal levels, and England and Wales, this chapter, by necessity, is also a comparative excursion into public fears, the sense of democracy, the role of expertise, and the attempt to regulate in an apparently insecure world. Appendixes, note, and references