Citation

Petrunik M, Deutschmann L. Int. J. Offender Ther. Comp. Criminol. 2008; 52(5): 499-519.

Affiliation

University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0306624X07308108

PMID

17991905

Abstract

Continental European and Anglo-American jurisdictions differ with regard to criminal justice and community responses to sex offenders on an exclusion-inclusion spectrum ranging from community protection measures on one end to therapeutic programs in the middle and restorative justice measures on the other end. In the United States, populist pressure has resulted in a community protection approach exemplified by sex offender registration, community notification, and civil commitment of violent sexual predators. Although the United Kingdom and Canada have followed, albeit more cautiously, the American trend to adopt exclusionist community protection measures, these countries have significant community-based restorative justice initiatives, such as Circles of Support and Accountability. Although sex offender crises have recently occurred in continental Europe, a long-standing tradition of the medicalization of deviance, along with the existence of social structural buffers against the influence of victim-driven populist penal movements, has thus far limited the spread of formal community protection responses.

Language: en