Description
Book SynopsisAddressing common myths and misconceptions about sexual offending, this book highlights the current state of scientific knowledge about the origins and the development of sexual offending. It offers a critical overview of current criminal justice policies and close to 100 years of research on how to best improve these policies through theoretically-grounded and methodologically-rigorous research.
Focusing on proactive prevention-oriented strategies, this book revisits popular ideas about sexual offending through an evidence-based lens, addressing ideological and populist discourse that has led to ineffective and reactive policies. It advocates for a clearly defined concept of the phenomenon of sexual offending to underpin research and treatment. Uniquely, authors consider sexual offending from the viewpoint of criminal justice research and practitioners, incorporating the sociohistorical construction of sexual offending as a social problem, developmental life course research, and the impact of social policies. This book is a call for more proactive research on the origins and the development of sexual offending over the life course.
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Sexual offending: an elusive phenomenon in criminology's blind spot.- 2. The postwar sociolegal (de-) constructoin of sexual offending.- 3. Myths, false claims and erroneous conclusions about "sex offenders".- 4. The "sex offender" under the microscope: Are they different?.- 5. Why sexual offending?.- 6. The stepping stones to sexual offending.- 7. The Scarlet letter in the digital age: the impact of public sex offender registries.- 8. Correctional moneyball? Lessons learned from correctional risk management.- 9. The slippery slope of rehabilitation: science, common sense or social justice?.- 10. Conclusion: toward a reasonable, scientifically grounded, developmental perspective.
