Managing Unacceptable Risk: Sex Offenders, Community Responses, and Social Policy in the United States and Canada

Source: (2002) International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. 46(4):483-511.

This article compares the community protection-risk management model for the control of sex offenders with the clinical and justice models that preceded it and with a restorative justice alternative based on the principle of community reintegration. The author discusses how this community protection-risk management model reflects the new penology as well as the fusion of panopticism and synopticism. The author also discusses the model’s actual and potential social costs. He concludes with a brief look at circles of support and accountability. This Canadian approach involves setting up support circles of volunteers who enter into a covenant with persons designated as high-risk sex offenders to help them both to integrate into the community and to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend.