Responding To Sexual Offending In A Risk Society: A Review Of Policy And Changes In Approach To Work With Perpetrators Of Sexual Offending By The Probation Service In England And Wales
| Author | Jill Dealey |
| Pages | 46-63 |
46
British Journal of Community Justice
©2020 Manchester Metropolitan University
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 16(2) 46–63
RESPONDING TO SEXUAL OFFENDING IN A RISK
SOCIETY: A REVIEW OF POLICY AND CHANGES IN
APPROACH TO WORK WITH PERPETRATORS OF
SEXUAL OFFENDING BY THE PROBATION SERVICE IN
ENGLAND AND WALES
Dr Jill Dealey, University of Chichester
Abstract
According to Beck (1992), key aspects of a risk society are the surveillance and management
of risk, and the use of actuarial tools to achieve these aims. These have also been central
tasks for the probation service and police when working with individuals convicted of sexual
offending behaviour. Through an initial examination of the risk society thesis, this paper
examines how risk came to be a dominant concept in the management of sexual offending
behaviour in England and Wales. It will discuss the impact on criminal justice legislation and
the work of probation officers who were tasked with working with these offenders. The
dominance of risk in working with sexual offending behaviour has been strengthened by
Acts of Parliament such as the Sex Offender Act 1997, whi ch introduced sex offender
registration, and the Sex Offender Act 2003. The actuarial tools OASys and Risk Matrix 2000
were designed to be explicitly focused on risk. Yet there is a growing body of literature
which argues that a holistic approach is effective in enabling desistance; and with the
development of more recent risk assessment tools such as the Active Risk Management
System (ARMS), there are indications that approaches to assessing and managing risk reflect
this ethos.
Keywords: sexual offending; probation; risk assessment; risk management; desistance
Introduction
In the contemporary criminal justice system, the concept of risk has impacted upon
legislation for the punishment of individuals convicted of sexual offending, and their
subsequent assessment and management by the probation service and police. Starting with
a discussion of the main features of the risk society thesis (Beck, 1992) this paper will outline
how risk came to dominate the discourse on sexual offending, and examine how recent
debates on desistance have led to a growing holistic approach by the probation service in
England and Wales in the assessment and management of sexual offending behaviour. The
risk assessment tools Offender Assessment System (OASys), Risk Matrix 2000 (RM2000),
Dealey
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Static and Acute and ARMS will be evaluated for their contribution to the creation of an
effective, responsive assessment of individuals convicted of sexual offending. Finally,
considerations for the development of future policy relating to the assessment and
management of sexual offending behaviour will be explored. The focus of the article is the
probation service; however, it is important to note that work with perpetrators of sexual
offending has a strong multidisciplinary focus (Nash, 2016; Hoggett et al, 2019). The role of
the police is also central to the ri sk assessment and management of these offenders,
through measures such as MAPPA (Nash and Walker, 2009) and i n using most of the
actuarial tools which will be discussed here.
From the late twentieth century, the work of the probation service in England and Wales
became increasingly informed by the concept of risk, which has significantly increased the
service’s reliance on bureaucratic and restrictive methods of managing individuals
(Fitzgibbon, 2011, 2012; Fitzgibbon and Lea, 2010; Nash, 1999; 2006; Nash and Williams,
2008). The style of supervision expected from the probation service has altered because of
this concentration on risk. The focus on managing any risk of serious harm which may result
from reoffending underpins the approach to supervising a case. This approach will inform
the requirements that individuals under supervision are asked to undertake and the style
of case management which the supervising probation officer will adopt. It has been argued
that the probation service has been required to adopt a more punitive approach with
offenders, with Nash (1999) arguing that the term probation could be renamed
“polibation”; in recognition of the adoption of approaches to work more commonly
attributed to the police.
It is suggested that those who have committed an offence of a sexual nature are one group
who are dealt with using a focus on containment, both through lengthy custodial sentence
and restrictive procedures whilst they are on licence in the community; through monitoring
and surveillance strategies, such as the Sex Offenders Register and Sex Offender Prevention
Orders and exclusion zones (Hebenton, 2011; Hebenton and Seddon, 2009; McAlinden,
2008). There may also be restrictions on employment, future relationships and the
ownership and use of computers and access to the internet (Hebenton, 2011). The
preoccupation wi th the control and r egulation of risk is not exclusive to the probation
service; it has become an aspect of many private sector industries (notably insurance, a
service entirely concerned with assessing risky situations in the public domain). However,
for the probation service, it has had an overwhelming effect on the way the organisation
operates. Sophisticated technology has been created to calculate and assess the effects of
the current risk based upon an individual’s existing offence history and to create projections
for potential future risks. This is a change which, it has been argued, has undermined
probation officers’ confidence in using professional judgement to work creatively with
offenders generally (Burke and Collett, 2010; Eadie et al, 2012; McNeill, 2006) and sex
offenders specifically (Kemshall, 2009). There is a statutory obligation for probation and
the police to liaise under Multi Agency P ublic Protection Arrangements (Harrison, 2011;
Kemshall and Wood, 2010; McAlinden, 2008; Nash and Walker, 2009; Nash and Williams,
2010; Wood and Kemshall, 2010). As a result of the What Works debate, at the end of the
twentieth century, the criminal justice system in England and Wales, like many others,
became predominantly risk-focused (Andrews and Bonta, 1994; Chapman and Hough, 1998;
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