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Desistance and Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders: Facilitation or Hindrance?

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Abstract

In an ideal world, there would be a seamless relationship between interventions that focus on risk factors causally associated with sexual reoffending and the subsequent release of, and ongoing support for, offenders into the community. However, emotionally fueled and uninformed public responses to news of released sex offenders, and the legislation such responses have inspired, severely hinder this process. Our aims in this paper are to review findings of research on community attitudes about sex offenders within a desistance framework. More specifically, we provide a synthesis of the current research literature on attitudes towards sex offenders. Second, we consider in more detail those studies that include community member samples. Third, we review interventions aimed at promoting attitude change amongst professionals working with sex offenders and finally formulate some recommendations for promoting positive attitude change amongst the general public.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Gwenda M. Willis

  2. Lynn University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Jill S. Levenson

  3. School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

    Tony Ward

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  1. Gwenda M. Willis
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  2. Jill S. Levenson
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  3. Tony Ward
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Correspondence to Tony Ward.

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Willis, G.M., Levenson, J.S. & Ward, T. Desistance and Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders: Facilitation or Hindrance?. J Fam Viol 25, 545–556 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9314-8

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