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

Abstract

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.