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The treatment of sex offenders: evidence, ethics, and human rights
- Authors:
- BIRGDEN Astrid, CUCOLO Heather
- Journal article citation:
- Sexual Abuse a Journal of Research and Treatment, 23(3), September 2011, pp.295-313.
- Publisher:
- Sage
This article explores public policy in the United States with respect to the treatment of sex offenders. However, working with sex offenders is fraught with legal and ethical problems, including the mandate that community protection automatically outweighs offender rights. The article suggests that the current public policy for managing sex offenders is punitive, lacks evidence, and ignores basic human rights – in addressing community protection, contemporary sex offender treatment is based on treatment-as-management rather than treatment-as-rehabilitation. The alternative presented is to deliver rehabilitation treatment underpinned by international human rights law and universal professional ethics – that sex offender treatment should be evidence-based because, in the context of human rights and correction, it both works and is ethical. The article concludes that social work practitioners should actively seek a community/offender balance by emphasising inclusion through support rather than exclusion through restraint.