Preventing Sexual Violence: How Society Should Cope With Sex Offenders systematically critiques the current treatment of sex offenders in an effort to determine how best to prevent re-offending without infringing on the rights of citizens. The book offers the latest data about sex offenders and the novel and powerful legal measures enacted to prevent sexual violence. In recent years, states have initiated programs for sex offenders involving involuntary commitment, mandatory registration, community notification, and even chemical castration. The author identifies which new strategies work, which strategies are based on false assumptions, and which should be modified or abandoned. In addition to recommending ways to improve programs, the author focuses on an effective risk management program that could be expanded and reproduced nationwide. The author details how recent research has made progress in identifying which groups of sexually violent offenders pose the greatest risk for re-offending, and how to effectively reduce that risk for this population. This book provides criminal justice professionals, clinicians working with sexually violent offenders, and policy makers with a clear and realistic plan for humanely coping with sex offenders and reducing further sexual violence. Primary audience: Psychiatrists and forensic psychologists, mental health practitioners who treat sex offenders; lawyers and criminal justice professionals. Secondary audience: Policymakers; students in classes on therapeutic jurisprudence or therapy and treatment of sex offender.

The aggressive measures taken in the US since about 1990 to ensure that previous sexual offenders will not commit such crimes again, have been enacted out of genuine concern, says La Fond (law, constitution, and society; U. of Missouri-Kansas City) but are founded on false assumptions rather than hard facts and careful analysis. He examines what is known and what is not known about sex offenders, victims, and sex crimes in order to evaluate the current wisdom on which the new laws are based; and analyzes whether they work and are cost-effective.
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