Sexual Offending: The impact of the juxtaposition between social constructions and evidence-based approaches

ABSTRACT

“Criminals,” particularly sex offenders, are thought of as an indistinguishable, homogenous group by society, despite the variety of offenses they commit, with differing levels of severity, impact, and outcome. Perceptions of criminal behavior also fail to recognize that everyone engages in norm-violating/unlawful/immoral behavior at one time or another. This view of offending, that it is something “other” dangerous people do, combined with the tendency to generalize across varied behaviors and experiences, has resulted in the construct of the sex offender as a “monster.” This has implications for how sex offenders are treated at each stage of the criminal justice process resulting in a problematic approach to sex offenders, one that is not centered on evidence and is, ultimately, not in anyone’s best interests. Specifically, the dialogue results in: lower confession rates, lower conviction rates, ineffective treatment/rehabilitation, and a cycle of violence that causes severe harm within society, as a whole. This paper will address each stage (e.g., investigative interviewing, sentencing, etc.), showing the ways that social constructions have had an adverse effect, how the treatment of sex offenders at each stage is contrary to best practise/the evidence, and will provide recommendations for future research and policy decisions that are in line with the evidence base.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual offending
• sexual offenders
• discourse
• media
• Criminal Justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ John Worboys is known as the black cab rapist and was originally convicted in 2009 for sexual offenses against women. He was due to be released in 2018 but following public outcry the parole board’s decision was reversed as more victims came forward. He subsequently received further convictions for historical cases of rape. The US film producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and other sexual offenses in 2020. His offenses triggered the #metoo movement. Both cases were extensively discussed in the media in 2019–20.

² Although rare there are numerous examples of prison riots occurring across the decades in both US (Attica Correctional Facility 1971 through to St. Louis City Justice Center 2021) and UK (1990 Strangeways Prison toHMP Winchester 2019). In February 2022 all US Federal prisons were locked down due to violent incidences (Buncombe, 2022 from the Independent) and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated frustrations and poor conditions leading to greater risk of riots (Olla, 2021, theGuardian).