D. Richard Laws

Most forensic psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers involved in the assessment of sex offenders today have a good grasp of where the field stands. Many of their colleagues do not have an appreciation of why we are where we are. This book is an attempt to bridge that gap, to provide some historical background of sex offender assessment from 1830 to the present. Topics covered in this book include early efforts to identify and describe criminal populations statistically; the introduction of phrenology as a description of brain function; the efforts of criminal anthropologists to develop criminal taxonomies; the technology of anthropometry to identify individuals by measurement of bodily structure; and the introduction of fingerprinting which replaced anthropometry and remains largely unchanged to the present day. The guiding principle of the book is to help the reader understand that all of this represents a continuous thread of development and, disparate as they might seem, all of them are connected. This book is essential reading for undergraduates in psychology and sociology, as well as professionals in training and early stages of practice.

This book surveys the history, current status, and critical issues regarding the various mechanisms designed to control sex offenders. It shows that the social problem of sex offending is not apparently resolvable by any of the means currently employed. A large array of procedures are used in the attempt to control the difficult population of sex offenders, including: imprisonment, institutional and community treatment, community monitoring by probation and parole, electronic monitoring, registration as a sex offender, community notification of an offender’s status, strict limits on behavioral movement in the community, and residence restrictions. However, these constraints on behavior are almost completely the result of public outrage regarding sensational sex crimes, overreaction of media coverage that produce inaccurate statements of potential community risk, and the efforts of the legal profession and politicians to quell this anger and foreboding by enacting legislation that supposedly confronts the risk. This book demonstrates that we have constructed a massive edifice of community control that is socially and politically driven and which has largely failed to contain sex crime.

This book offers a fresh perspective on treating a population that is often demonized by policymakers, the public, and even clinicians. The authors argue that most sex offenders are people like us, with the potential to lead meaningful, law-abiding lives—if given a chance and appropriate support. They describe an empirically and theoretically grounded rehabilitation approach, the Good Lives Model, which can be integrated with the assessment and intervention approaches that clinicians already use. Drawing on the latest knowledge about factors promoting desistance from crime, the book discusses how encouraging naturally occurring desistance processes, and directly addressing barriers to community reintegration, can make treatment more effective and long lasting.

"This book is a rich source of information on the application of relapse prevention with sex offenders. It presents readers promising directions for change and areas that need revision based on new research findings and the integration of emerging theoretical models that show considerable promise in this field. . . . The material in this book should help us construct a better, safer vehicle for the treatment of sex offenders in the new millennium." –from the Foreword by G. Alan Marlatt, University of Washington It is estimated that relapse prevention methods are employed in more than 90% of all North American sex offender treatment programs (of which there are more than 2,000). Comparable statistics are true in most industrialized countries around the world. Over the last decade a great deal has been learned about the treatment of sexual offenders, and particularly about relapse prevention. This sourcebook provides clinicians with the most current, practical information about working with sex offenders to prevent relapse. It reflects the advances and insights of the past decade since the publication of Relapse Prevention with Sex Offenders, focusing on the major reconceptualizations, revisions, and innovations that will chart treatment programs for the first decade of the new millennium.