Sexual Assault Is A Major Global Issue

Sex offenders are described as a person who commits a crime involving a sexual act. They are people convicted for sexual crime in a criminal court. Sex offenders make a high percentage of the offender population and are considered special circumstance offenders. Sex offenders typically use sex as a coping mechanism. Juvenile sex offenders are those age from adolescences to an adult, who committed a sexual act without consent both physically and verbally.

About 43.9% of sex offenders identified both male and female perpetrators as opposed to 9.6% of nonsexual offenders. These individuals were exposed to more severe forms of victimization with a longer duration. Sex offenders endured an average of 5.6 years of abuse while nonsexual offenders experienced 3.9 years. Through the use of logistic regression analyses, Burton, Miller, and Shill (2002) concluded that method of operation and gender of abuser accurately predicts whether an individual will sexually offend. The analysis correctly predicted and placed 78.3% of the sex-offending males into their correct groups.

Sexual assault occurs every two minutes in the United States. Sexual violence against women is still endemic in the United States. Statistics show nearly one in five women have been sexually assaulted. Managing sex offenders is still an issue in the criminal justice system. Repeat offenders are extremely difficult to monitor. The national legislature monitoring system contains an absence of effective research in monitoring sex offenders. Sexual offender registration and notification Act (SORNA) operates in all the US states and territories. The objective is to monitor and track sex offenders by law enforcement. Also they provide information to the public and the communities about the offenders. For example, the National registry allows the public to be informed of a registered offender and their demographics.

There have been many federal acts passed in correspondence with sex offenses that illicit feat with the public. There are many different types of ways in which Levenson & colleagues’ (2007) describes the perceptions that the public has based on certain factors. For instance, in relation to the perception about the sex offender notification system, a survey produced results of around 80 percent in favor of these registries, because these individuals felt safer in their communities knowing who was in their neighborhood. Further, due to this fear that resonated in the early 1990’s communities do have tools such as residential restrictions, civil commitment, notification procedures, etc. that aid in the protection. However, there are myths associated with sex offenders, for example legislation often states that the reasoning for new laws and regulations is due to the high recidivism rates. However, sex offenders have significantly lower recidivism rates than believed. Also, there are countless people who do not believe that sex offenders can be assisted with techniques from a psychological standpoint. Most people think that these offenders cannot be treated, however, there is research being conducted that is promising. Finally, there is a common misconception that sex offenders kill their victims, especially children more often than other killers, however this is not true.

Start blaming the system, not the victim. Sexual assault is a crime that is very common, yet the punishment perpetrators receive is not as harsh as it needs to be to reduce the occurrence of these crimes. Laws concerning sexual crimes have been edited over decades to be stricter however, sex offenders typically receive little or no punishment. Sexual Assault is defined as any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient (“Sexual Assault”). Victims of sexual assault are often blamed as the reason for the crime being committed while the blame is taken away from the offender. Harsher punishment must be enacted on sex offenders because the victims suffer conflict from the crime throughout their

Last week, the White House released a short, celebrity packed, 60-second public service announcement (PSA) on the topic of sexual assault. 1 is 2 Many addressed those who are in control of preventing sexual assault as its intended audience was those who can put a stop to sexual violence: the perpetrators or would-be offenders. Although this one minute announcement completed the task of bringing sexual assault to the forefront of discussion, it failed to encompass the central issues concerning the culture of sexual assault: societal misperceptions, the victims, and the justice system. Sexual assault is a phenomenon that has been around for centuries; the culture of sexual assault is rooted in both legal practices and societal perceptions.

Sexual offenders are the most vilified type of offenders within public opinion and the criminal justice system. The American precedent cases of Jacob Wetterling, Pam Lyncher, Megan Kanka, and other notorious crimes perpetrated by sexual offenders with a prior history of conviction have demanded a response from the criminal justice system to increase public safety. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Program was passed (Scholle, 2000), the first piece of legislation to advocate for the development of state-maintained registries of convicted sexual offenders. The legislation has been amended numerous times since then; in its present state, the law requires all states to maintain a registry, the mandatory registration of convicted sex offenders after release, community notification laws in place, and public access to the registry (Burchfield and Mingus, 2012; Lees and Tewksbury, 2006; Petrunik, Murphy, and Fedoroff, 2008; Scholle, 2000; Tewksbury and Lees, 2006; Wagner, 2011).

Sexual assault policy in the United States as it stands is clearly inadequate for protecting the physical wellbeing of men and women from sexual assault. Layering of policy serves a s a Band-Aid on a social wound much too large to be contained and the rise of sexual assault as a public problem reiterates the need for greater legislation and policy to protect everyone from becoming prey to the crime of sexual assault. While eyes focus on the (disproven) rise of violence in the United States, and turn to gun control, other violent crimes are forgotten. Sexual Assault has seen several cases of policy failure that actors have tried to salvage through the act of policy layering and have not significantly resolved the problem.

Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their

The number of registered sex offenders have increasingly grew over the years. Every day you see a man or women added to the registry for crimes against women and mostly children. The sex offender registries biggest and main focus is to keep the people in the community in each city and state informed and protected. ”Sex offenders and sex crimes provoke a great deal of anxiety in our society.” Baker, J, Brannon, Y, N., Fortney. , Levenson, J.S. (“Public Perceptions about Sex Offenders and Community Protection”). The sex offender registry is based solely on protecting the public from being a victim

Sex offenders tend to blend in to society virtually unnoticed until they offend or reoffend (Polizzi, MacKenzie, & Hickman, 1999). Currently, there is a large group of mental health professionals representing a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry clinical social work, counseling, and medicine, that continue to believe in the potential efficacy of treating sex offenders. Over the past decade, the sex offender treatment field has grown rapidly and the treatment of juvenile sex offenders is on the rise (Parks & Bard, 2006). The rationale for treating juvenile offenders is based on research which indicates that inappropriate sexual behavior patterns develop early and a failure to intervene and change behavior early often means that the offender will continue to escalate his/her inappropriate behavior, which could present an even greater danger to society (Ayland & West, 2006). Vivian-Bryne, (2004) suggests that professionals who treat adult sex offenders report that offenders who are incarcerated will eventually return to the community and therefore, therapeutic measures should be taken to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend even if those measures have not conclusively been identified as effective. Sexual offenders may find therapy valuable because it can allow them to retrace their upbringing to help them identify and understand the roots of their

Stories of sex offenders have been increasingly a focus of attention by the criminal justice system over the past years. By legal definition, a sex offender “is a person who is convicted of a sexual offense (Sex Offender Law & Legal Definition),” an act which is prohibited by the jurisdiction. What constitutes as a sex offense or normal/abnormal sexual behavior varies over time and place, meaning that it also varies by legal jurisdiction and culture. In the United States of America, for example, a person can be convicted of wide range of sexual behavior that includes prostitution, incest, sex with a minor, rape, and other sex offenses (Sex Offender Law & Legal Definition). As the nature of sex crimes have long held the

Sexual assault is one of the fastest growing violent crimes in America. Approximately 20% of all people charged with a sexual offense are juveniles. Among adult sex offenders, almost 50% report that their first offense occurred during their adolescence. (FBI, 1993) There are many different opinions, treatment options and legislation to manage the growing numbers of juvenile sex offenders. In today’s society the psychological and behavioral modification treatments used to manage juvenile sex offenders is also a growing concern. To understand and determine the proposed treatment methods, several related issues will need to be reviewed such as traditional sex offender therapy methods like cognitive therapy and alternative therapies like

When working with this specific population mental health professionals are often called on to evaluate and manage sex offender’s behavior. There are also times when individuals may be asked to give an opinion as to if the offender will repeat the behavior. Often times people that work with this population are referred to as (SOSs) Sex Offender Specialists. They have a specific group of diverse training and background. Some of these trainings incIude but are not limited to cognitive-behavioral, psychopharmacological, and therapeutic orientations.

In 2005, Lösel & Schmucker conducted a meta-analysis of sexual offender treatment. Featuring 69 studies containing 80 independent comparisons between treated and untreated offenders. treated offenders showed 37% less sexual recidivism compared to the control groups. Organic treatments such as