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Assessment of Risk to Reoffend: Historical Background

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Social Control of Sex Offenders

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Abstract

The preceding chapters have traced the development of legal, medical, and social practices designed to protect society from the harmful behavior of sex offenders. Most of these approaches have not yielded the promised benefit, a safer society, and some clearly have marginal or questionable value. This chapter and the one following will consider the development of instruments intended to assess the risk to engage in sexually offensive behavior. This approach can take two forms. First, it might be possible to assess the likelihood that an individual might offend in the future, although he/she has never done so previously. This is legally untenable because it threatens punishment for something that has not happened. There are, undoubtedly, many who would favor such a proactive, anticipatory move to prevent possible future crimes. For example, Jones, Harkins, and Beech (2015) offer an assessment procedure focused on future risk and discuss the implications of this approach. Second, when an individual has been positively identified as a sex offender, the more likely course would be to develop a method that would permit prediction of future criminality. The instruments available today, with modest empirical support, are believed to do just that. A considerable faith has been invested in the accuracy of these instruments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Behavioural Assessment, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    D. Richard Laws

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  1. D. Richard Laws
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Laws, D.R. (2016). Assessment of Risk to Reoffend: Historical Background. In: Social Control of Sex Offenders. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39126-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39126-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-39125-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39126-1

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