Sex Offender Policy and Prevention

Abstract

Public backlash to high-profile sex crimes has led to the incredibly swift development of sex offender legislation. The last 20 years alone has seen the development and implementation of public sex offender registries, housing restrictions, and sex offender civil commitment—policies that now seem ubiquitous to the struggle against sexual violence. Despite the popularity of these programs and the sense of safety they impart upon the public, the core of these policies rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of sexual violence, those who commit it, and why. The classic image of a sex offender in the community is one who targets stranger victims, offends violently and repeatedly, typically against children. In reality, there is considerable variability among sex offenders, the majority of whom do not fit within the aforementioned framework.

While it is a good thing that the majority of sex offenders are not the violent stranger rapists of the public’s collective nightmares, this common misconception has enormous ramifications for the types of legislation enacted to keep our communities “safe.” The first goal of this chapter is to address the faulty perceptions of sex offenders and sexual violence and to offer empirical evidence as a means to refute inaccurate myths and stereotypes. This chapter will also demonstrate how false perceptions of offending behavior have contributed to the development of sex offender laws over time, and how many of these laws’ shortcomings are due to the inaccurate assumptions on which they are based. Finally, opportunities for reform will be presented—both reform of current policies and reform of the societal structure in which the current laws are propagated. A shift toward primary prevention practices, rather than reactionary tertiary policies, is proposed.