Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders


Book Description

Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders is a fully up-to-date, comprehensive and user-friendly guide on dangerous offenders. It considers what a dangerous offender is and how such offenders are assessed and classified.




Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders


Book Description

Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders is a fully up-to-date, comprehensive and user-friendly guide on those offenders who are often assessed as being dangerous. Outlining, evaluating and commenting on specific methods, regimes and strategies for dealing with dangerous offenders throughout each chapter, this book begins by considering what a dangerous offender is and providing a brief historical account of how the label has been used for different types of offender over the last three or four centuries. The book examines sentencing policy in addition to early and current dangerousness legislation, evaluating the available sentences specifically designed for dangerous offenders and assessing their use and appropriateness. The role of risk and risk assessment tools is discussed, considering what risk assessment is, the way in which it works and how over recent times it has become more reliable and valid. It looks at the practical realities of how serious sexual and violent offenders are dealt with by the penal system in England and Wales. Finally, specific offender groups are considered, including female offenders, children and young people and mentally disordered offenders. Each chapter considers whether there are any differences in terms of policy, assessment and management strategies when sentencing and managing each distinct group; and if not whether any such modifications are required. This book will be key reading for students of law, criminology, social policy, psychology and sociology and of interest to criminal justice professionals including the police, prison officers, probation officers, psychologists, lawyers and judges.




Mental Health and Offending


Book Description

This book explores the controversial relationship between mental health and offending and looks at the ways in which offenders with mental health problems are cared for, coerced and controlled by the criminal justice and mental health systems. It provides a much-needed criminological approach to the field of forensic mental health. Beginning with an exploration into why the relationship between mental health and offending is so complex, readers will be introduced to a range of perspectives through which mental health and its relationship to offending behaviour can be understood. The book considers the politics surrounding mental health and offending, focusing particularly on the changing policy response to mentally disordered offenders since the mid-1990s. With dedicated chapters concerning the police, courts, secure services and the community, this book explores a range of issues including: • The tensions between the care, coercion and control of mentally disordered offenders • The increasingly blurred boundaries between mental health and criminal justice • Rights, responsibilities, accountability and blame • Risk, public protection and precaution • Challenges involved with treatment, recovery and rehabilitation • Staffing challenges surrounding multi-agency working • Funding, privatisation and challenges surrounding service commissioning • Methodological challenges in the field. Providing an accessible and concise overview of the field and its key perspectives, this book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in mental health offered by criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, nursing and public policy departments. It will also be of interest to a wide range of mental health and criminal justice practitioners.




Preventing Sexual Harm


Book Description

Preventing Sexual Harm provides an overview of current criminal justice strategies for tackling sexual violence, and highlights existing positive criminological approaches that could help prevent sexual abuse and harm. Sexual violence is a complex, multi-faceted crime. Its causes and consequences are both multiple and enduring and our understanding of sexual violence is embedded within our social, cultural, and political constructs. As such, a response to sexual violence ought to be equally complex and multi-faceted. Alternative approaches might therefore be needed, such as positive criminology. This book explores positive criminology as a mechanism to reduce the risk of recidivism, eradicate harm, prevent reoffending as well as to help reintegrate those with histories of sexual abuse back into the community. In light of recent historic cases of sexual abuse and poor institutional response to these allegations, it opens with an overview of the current landscape of sexual offending. The book then reviews the current positive criminological approaches already in existence in the effort to prevent sexual abuse by outlining the approach of positive criminology and by demonstrating the many gaps in practice that might benefit from this new way of working to prevent sexual abuse. By highlighting that an alternative response to sexual violence is needed, and by presenting the idea that a positive criminological paradigm is worthy of further examination, this book will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, criminal justice, and forensic psychology.




The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Legal and Ethical Aspects of Sex Offender Treatment and Management


Book Description

This handbook combines the latest theory on a high-profile, complex subject in criminology, exploring the legal and ethical dimensions of society’s response to sex offenders in jurisdictions from the USA to Japan. The first publication to offer a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of legal and ethical issues relating to sex offender treatment and management Covers a range of related issues, from media coverage to equality duties Presents research from numerous national jurisdictions including the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, and Israel Includes perspectives from respected leading academics and practitioners, including William Marshall, Tony Ward, Doug Boer, Daniel Wilcox, and Marnie Rice




Responding to Sexual Offending


Book Description

This collection brings together international contributors from multiple disciplines to discuss the current public, social and governmental understandings and responses to sexual violence. Exploring issues such as how to manage sex offenders, the volume provides recommendations for how to reduce offending and improve community engagement.




An Introduction to Penology: Punishment, Prisons and Probation


Book Description

An Introduction to Penology is a concise, informative, scholarly guide that will speak to a variety of audiences interested in how the notion of punishment plays out in community and custodial settings with people who have broken the law. With a particular focus on prisons and probation, the book provides an opportunity for readers to critically engage with the concept of punishment (in theory and practice) and consider different ways in which we, as a society, can respond to lawbreaking. The text will allow students to pursue a more in-depth study of two of the main criminal justice institutions through the lens of their organisational structures, cultures, service delivery and responses to the needs of minority and vulnerable groups. Throughout the text, students will be encouraged to critically engage with longstanding penological debates taking into consideration the theory, policy and practice of punishment, and will explore ways in which we can rethink penology on an individual and social level and begin to make a case for social justice rather than criminal justice. This innovative and contemporary text is a must read for students studying criminology, criminal justice, penology and those interested in pursuing a career in either the prison or probation services. Lol Burke is Professor in Criminal Justice and Dr Helena Gosling is a Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University.




Criminology


Book Description

Criminology is a broad-ranging and stimulating introduction that is ideal for undergraduates approaching the subject for the first time. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field and includes a range of learning features designed to help students engage with the material covered.




The Making of Chinese Criminal Law


Book Description

By examining the reasons behind the preventive criminalization of Chinese criminal law, this book argues that the shift of criminal law generates popular expectations of legislative participation, and meets punitive demands of the public, but the expansion of criminal law lacks effective constraints, which will keep restricting people’s freedom in the future. The book is inspired by the eighth amendment of Chinese criminal law in 2011, which amended several penalties related to road, drug and environmental safety. It is on the eighth amendment that subsequent amendments have been based. The amendment stemmed from a series of nationally known incidents that triggered widespread public dissatisfaction with the Chinese criminal justice system. Based on John Kingdon’s theory of the multiple streams, the book explains the origins of the legislative process and its outcomes by examining the role of public opinion, policy experts and political actors in the making of Chinese criminal law. It argues that in authoritarian China, the prominence of risk control through criminal justice methods is a state response to uncertainties generated through reforms under the CCP’s leadership. The process of criminal lawmaking has become more responsive and inclusive than ever before, even though it remains a consultation with the elites within the framework set by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including representatives of the Lianghui, government ministries, academics and others. The process enhances the CCP’s legitimacy by not only generating popular expectations of legislative participation, but also by meeting the punitive demands of the public. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers in the areas of Chinese criminal law and comparative law.




Preventive Justice


Book Description

This book arises from a three-year study of Preventive Justice directed by Professor Andrew Ashworth and Professor Lucia Zedner at the University of Oxford. The study seeks to develop an account of the principles and values that should guide and limit the state's use of preventive techniques that involve coercion against the individual. States today are increasingly using criminal law or criminal law-like tools to try to prevent or reduce the risk of anticipated future harm. Such measures include criminalizing conduct at an early stage in order to allow authorities to intervene; incapacitating suspected future wrongdoers; and imposing extended sentences or indefinate on past wrongdoers on the basis of their predicted future conduct - all in the name of public protection and security. The chief justification for the state's use of coercion is protecting the public from harm. Although the rationales and justifications of state punishment have been explored extensively, the scope, limits and principles of preventive justice have attracted little doctrinal or conceptual analysis. This book re-assesses the foundations for the range of coercive measures that states now take in the name of prevention and public protection, focussing particularly on coercive measures involving deprivation of liberty. It examines whether these measures are justified, whether they distort the proper boundaries between criminal and civil law, or whether they signal a larger change in the architecture of security. In so doing, it sets out to establish a framework for what we call 'Preventive Justice'.




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