Sex offender treatment and legislation.

Castration of sex offenders: prisoners' rights versus public safety.

Sexual victimization of children and adults is a significant treatment and public policy problem in the United States. To address increasing concerns regarding sex offender recidivism, nine states have passed legislation since 1996 authorizing the use of either chemical or physical castration. In most statutes, a repeat offender's eligibility for probation or parole is linked to acceptance of m...

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION AND NOTIFICATION ACT AS APPLIED TO JUVENILES Evaluating the Ability to Predict Sexual Recidivism

The recently enacted Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act will expand and standardize the registration of adolescent sex offenders. To evaluate the effectiveness of this and similar legislation, the authors assessed 91 juvenile males who had been adjudicated for a sexual felony offense and 174 juvenile males who had no history of sexual offending with several risk measures. On admission t...

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions and Sex Offender Legislation: Evidence of Evidence-Based Policy?

Collaboration among sex offender treatment providers and probation and parole officers: the beliefs and behaviors of treatment providers.

New and emerging collaborative responses to sex offender management are challenging traditional notions about how treatment providers and probation and parole officers (POs) deliver services to this difficult population. Typically, sex offender treatment professionals provide community-based services to offenders who are supervised by POs. Yet, no comprehensive survey has investigated how treat...

An examination of suicide attempts among incarcerated sex offenders.

Little is known about suicide attempts among sex offenders. This study examines the rates of nonfatal suicide attempts among a sample (N = 3,030) of incarcerated male sex offenders. Overall, the authors found that 14% of sex offenders in the study sample had made a suicide attempt at some point in their lives. Of those, 11% had reported a suicide attempt prior to incarceration, 0.5% had made a ...