Handling Sexual Predators: History And Treatment Of Disturbed Individuals

9 Pages 2263 Words

Handling Sexual Predators: History and Treatment of Disturbed Individuals
Sex offenders are deeply disturbed individuals, whether they are disabled intellectually or mentally healthy, and there are many ways in which these people are being monitored through a series of probation and parole tactics. The representation of sex offender crimes is documented in many statistics that are found in current research. There are also studies that have been done to illustrate the impact of these sexual assaults against their helpless victims. Certain characteristics, background, and the environment in which the offender was raised all contribute to their eventual sexual offenses. Although many researchers have noted that once a sex offender always a sex offender, there are still treatment programs that are trying to rehabilitate the offender and successfully reintegrate that person back into their former community, even though this process can be complex at times.
History of Sex Offenders
Sex offenders emerged as the ultimate dangerous criminal class in the 1990’s. They appeared to be the criminal justice “issue of the year in that decade, and as a category of offenders, they were among the highest priority for the criminal justice system to manage and contain” (Lynch, 2002: 529). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called “sexual pervert was first identified in medical-professional and legal realms; those who had a proclivity toward sex acts that did not lead to procreation ran the risk of being labeled a pervert: a label that was meant to describe the whole of the person, rather than the specific non-normative behaviors” (Lynch, 2002: 529).
Over the last decade, state legislatures spent an exceptional amount of time and resources in addressing the behavior of sex offenders. Since 1990, sex offenders in at least 21 states have become “eligible for civil commitment in mental health facilities after their release...