NCJ Number
219658
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 51 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2007 Pages: 369-383
Date Published
August 2007
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article reviews current trends in sex offender legislation and analyzes how these policies may impact sex offender recidivism and treatment.
Abstract
Despite less than promising research findings, it is likely that the public will continue to favor incarceration and incapacitation of sex offenders over treatment. Future research should explore other methods of dealing with sex offenders to replace or accompany those already in use. Main trends under examination included: mandatory sentencing laws, civil commitment, community notification, monitoring, and supervision. The current trend in dealing with sex offenders is to incarcerate them. Additionally, multiple new laws have been enacted allowing for longer periods of confinement for sex offenders. Many States even have mandatory sentencing laws for sex offenders to ensure that their incarceration will be both severe and uniform. For those who have already been released, there has been a movement toward increased monitoring. Sex offenders can also be civilly committed following the termination of their criminal sentence. While the option of civil commitments was originally designed to offer treatment to mentally ill offenders, it has devolved into a system used to keep sex offenders out of the community after their maximum sentences have expired. Once sex offenders have been released into the community and are under community supervision, a variety of laws govern their whereabouts and actions, including community notification laws, physical monitoring systems, and lifetime supervision policies. Many of these legal-based methods for dealing with sex offenders lack research regarding their effectiveness and the research on community notification laws indicates that these laws are ineffective and impractical. References