Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders is a fully up-to-date, comprehensive and user-friendly guide on dangerous offenders. It considers what a dangerous offender is and how such offenders are assessed and classified.

Circles of Support and Accountability is a voluntary initiative that assists people with convictions for sexual offences to resettle in the community. People leaving prison with such convictions often have difficulties in resettling. They carry the burden of the conviction itself, which may be both stigmatising and isolating, and they are the subject of sex offender register requirements, parole and other supervisory conditions. Circles of Support and Accountability in the UK started over ten years ago and have slowly spread across the country. They work closely with the police and probation services but rely entirely on volunteers prepared to give up their time to work with people often otherwise shunned by communities. Circles offer support to the person concerned but also hold them accountable for their future behaviour. They aim to ensure there are ‘no more victims’. This book is based on original research and provides a close-up picture of how these Circles of Support and Accountability work in practice. It brings together for the first time the voices of all the participants, from the offenders and the volunteers through to the Coordinators who link the volunteers to the professionals in the form of the police and probation services. The research was commissioned by Circles UK and funded by the Wates Foundation and the University of Leeds, School of Law.

The Oxford Handbook on Sex Offenses and Sex Offenders provides comprehensive, even-handed analysis of the myriad of topics related to sex offenses, including pornography, sex trafficking, criminal justice responses, and the role of social media in sex crimes. Extending beyond the existing scholarly research on the topic, this volume teases out the key debates, controversies, and challenges involved in addressing sex crimes.

This book, the first of two volumes edited by McCartan and Kemshall, focusses on perceptions of sexual offenders, and how risk is used by policy makers, stakeholders, academics and practitioners to both construct and respond to unknown and known sex offenders within the contexts of criminal justice, health and social policy. The chapters provide an oversight of contemporary policies, practices and debates within the area to help both professionals and researchers. The collection focuses on emerging areas (public health approaches, prevention, public perceptions of sexual abuse, and social constructionism), as well as more traditional topics (media, preventative and exceptional sentencing, resilience, and work force development). The authors examine public and professional engagement on sex offender management, and the changing socio-political landscape of sexual offender management. A bold and engaging volume, this edited collection will be of great importance to scholars and practitioners interested in perceptions of sexual offending.

This book explores the controversial relationship between mental health and offending and looks at the ways in which offenders with mental health problems are cared for, coerced and controlled by the criminal justice and mental health systems. It provides a much-needed criminological approach to the field of forensic mental health. Beginning with an exploration into why the relationship between mental health and offending is so complex, readers will be introduced to a range of perspectives through which mental health and its relationship to offending behaviour can be understood. The book considers the politics surrounding mental health and offending, focusing particularly on the changing policy response to mentally disordered offenders since the mid-1990s. With dedicated chapters concerning the police, courts, secure services and the community, this book explores a range of issues including: • The tensions between the care, coercion and control of mentally disordered offenders • The increasingly blurred boundaries between mental health and criminal justice • Rights, responsibilities, accountability and blame • Risk, public protection and precaution • Challenges involved with treatment, recovery and rehabilitation • Staffing challenges surrounding multi-agency working • Funding, privatisation and challenges surrounding service commissioning • Methodological challenges in the field. Providing an accessible and concise overview of the field and its key perspectives, this book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in mental health offered by criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, nursing and public policy departments. It will also be of interest to a wide range of mental health and criminal justice practitioners.

Preventing Sexual Harm provides an overview of current criminal justice strategies for tackling sexual violence, and highlights existing positive criminological approaches that could help prevent sexual abuse and harm. Sexual violence is a complex, multi-faceted crime. Its causes and consequences are both multiple and enduring and our understanding of sexual violence is embedded within our social, cultural, and political constructs. As such, a response to sexual violence ought to be equally complex and multi-faceted. Alternative approaches might therefore be needed, such as positive criminology. This book explores positive criminology as a mechanism to reduce the risk of recidivism, eradicate harm, prevent reoffending as well as to help reintegrate those with histories of sexual abuse back into the community. In light of recent historic cases of sexual abuse and poor institutional response to these allegations, it opens with an overview of the current landscape of sexual offending. The book then reviews the current positive criminological approaches already in existence in the effort to prevent sexual abuse by outlining the approach of positive criminology and by demonstrating the many gaps in practice that might benefit from this new way of working to prevent sexual abuse. By highlighting that an alternative response to sexual violence is needed, and by presenting the idea that a positive criminological paradigm is worthy of further examination, this book will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, criminal justice, and forensic psychology.

This handbook combines the latest theory on a high-profile, complex subject in criminology, exploring the legal and ethical dimensions of society’s response to sex offenders in jurisdictions from the USA to Japan. The first publication to offer a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of legal and ethical issues relating to sex offender treatment and management Covers a range of related issues, from media coverage to equality duties Presents research from numerous national jurisdictions including the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, and Israel Includes perspectives from respected leading academics and practitioners, including William Marshall, Tony Ward, Doug Boer, Daniel Wilcox, and Marnie Rice

This collection brings together international contributors from multiple disciplines to discuss the current public, social and governmental understandings and responses to sexual violence. Exploring issues such as how to manage sex offenders, the volume provides recommendations for how to reduce offending and improve community engagement.

An Introduction to Penology is a concise, informative, scholarly guide that will speak to a variety of audiences interested in how the notion of punishment plays out in community and custodial settings with people who have broken the law. With a particular focus on prisons and probation, the book provides an opportunity for readers to critically engage with the concept of punishment (in theory and practice) and consider different ways in which we, as a society, can respond to lawbreaking. The text will allow students to pursue a more in-depth study of two of the main criminal justice institutions through the lens of their organisational structures, cultures, service delivery and responses to the needs of minority and vulnerable groups. Throughout the text, students will be encouraged to critically engage with longstanding penological debates taking into consideration the theory, policy and practice of punishment, and will explore ways in which we can rethink penology on an individual and social level and begin to make a case for social justice rather than criminal justice. This innovative and contemporary text is a must read for students studying criminology, criminal justice, penology and those interested in pursuing a career in either the prison or probation services. Lol Burke is Professor in Criminal Justice and Dr Helena Gosling is a Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University.

Criminology is a broad-ranging and stimulating introduction that is ideal for undergraduates approaching the subject for the first time. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field and includes a range of learning features designed to help students engage with the material covered.