Managing High Risk Sex Offenders in the Community by Karen Harrison

Author:Karen Harrison [Harrison, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843925262
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Addressing levels of risk

Moving from a purely punitive response to sex offending to one where retribution and restoration are combined will facilitate the management of both the known and unknown risks posed by sexual offenders. In short, in combination with the formal criminal justice system, restorative justice is itself presented as a regulatory approach to sexual crime (McAlinden 2007).

In this respect, research by Soothill and colleagues (Soothill et al. 2005) has identified three main categories of offender: known and high-risk, known but low-risk, and unknown risk. Restorative justice offers a practical means of managing the risk posed by each of these categories of offender. For example, known and high-risk offenders could continue to be prosecuted in the normal way and then reintegrated into the community via COSA on release. For known and low-risk or low to middle-risk offenders, circles could be used as an effective alternative to prosecution. As now happens with young offenders in England and Wales, the legal framework and more punitive sanctions, however, can be retained for use with habitual offenders (Crawford and Newburn 2003). This approach is similar, in some respects, to Braithwaite’s enforcement pyramid which envisages restorative justice as part of an overall regulatory framework that includes deterrence and incapacitation, but, explicitly, not retribution (Braithwaite 1999, 2002). Moreover, by encouraging more offenders and victims to come forward, principally by reducing public vilification of offenders and the threat of punitive sanctions, it may also offer a critical means of probing and managing the unknown risk where offenders may be strongly suspected of sexual crime but have not actually been adjudicated upon.

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