Handbook on Sexual Violence (97 page)

adult abusers and those at risk of abusing;

family and friends of abusers;

parents of young people who are engaging in sexually inappropriate behaviours.

The goal of reaching those concerned about their own behaviour has been a core and novel feature of the helpline, and an evaluation by Eldridge
et al
. (2006) found that the largest number of calls between June 2002 and May 2006 were from abusers or potential abusers, with 1,804 calls from 674 different callers representing 45 per cent of calls. The Helpline aims to challenge and change attitudes, with an emphasis on raising awareness and supporting people to take appropriate action. With an overall focus on reducing the number of victims of abuse, the issue of child protection remains the foremost concern of the helpline team. Thus confidentiality has limits, since helpline operators will notify the relevant authorities if they feel an identifiable child is at risk. These limits of confidentiality are clearly communicated to callers when they contact the helpline, and form part of the helpline protocols (Kemshall
et al
. 2004).

Whilst the helpline does not provide long-term counselling, a limited

number of cases are selected for face-to-face treatment. Such treatment is severely limited by lack of resources and Stop It Now! actively campaigns for additional services for sexual abusers. However, preventative work remains hampered by a lack of treatment services, and by the absence of treatment

programmes outside of the criminal justice system. This makes direct work with offenders at Laws’ primary and secondary levels of prevention difficult.

Additional PHA responses: environmental and opportunity management approaches

In addition to early treatment, prevention strategies and public awareness campaigns, environmental and opportunity management approaches have also been an important strand in PHA responses. A prime example of this approach is the focus on the identification and management of sex offenders’ grooming behaviours, for example through Leisurewatch, a branded product by the Derwent Initiative (www.derwentinitiative.org.u
k accessed 16 February 2010). The project works to protect leisure sites (such as community centres, leisure halls and swimming pools) by training staff to recognise grooming behaviours and teaching staff how to challenge and manage them.

Leisurewatch encourages Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks on staff, provides training in Leisurewatch techniques (e.g. how to spot and act on grooming behaviours) for at least 80 per cent of frontline staff, establishes protocols with local police, and issues posters, information leaflets and a Leisurewatch manual. Continuity and stability of on-site Leisurewatch is facilitated by top-up visits, retraining if the 80 per cent rule is broken, a ‘mystery visit’ to ensure compliance, and tracking of any referrals to the police to evaluate outcomes. The overall aim is to make those leisure facilities used regularly by children safer, and to enable staff in those facilities to manage customers with protection in mind. It is of course possible that staff will also be offenders, and TDI accept this position on the basis that their training will make colleagues more vigilant (a position that has resulted in one successful prosecution). TDI are currently extending this work to parents’ workshops, aimed at helping parents to challenge inappropriate behaviour in their own families, but also extending the notion of community responsibility and vigilance. The strategy is an interesting mix of public awareness campaigning, environmental and crime opportunity management (literally by managing crime away through increased vigilance), and targeting key staff for practical training (some 4,000 staff had been trained at time of writing; see Kemshall 2008: 98–99 for a full review).

Whilst the impact of the training has not yet been subject to independent evaluation, internal evaluations by TDI based on the feedback ratings of trainees have been positive, with results indicating that the training gives confidence, enabling staff (and thereby members of the public) to challenge inappropriate behaviours not only in the Leisurewatch sites but in other public places. Interestingly the evaluation forms administered post training indicate that knowledge and awareness rises, and 20 per cent of participants disclose that they or a close family member have been affected by sexual offending (see www.http://www.tdi.org.uk/Leisurewatc
h.htm accessed 13 May 2010; TDI 2007; and personal communication from Chief Executive TDI with the author). However, these claims need to be subject to longer-term, independent evaluation. Broader evaluation of impact is embryonic but developing, with

TDI tracking the response of police, probation and MAPPA to any referrals made, and the subsequent outcomes (for example parole recalls, prosecutions, successful convictions). This database also has the potential to track patterns of offending, identifying the modus operandi of individual offenders, and the particular locations used by sex offenders.

This approach is important in that it can respond to a range of sexual behaviours in a range of settings, thus operating (albeit not explicitly) with a notion of continuum, and all sexually inappropriate behaviour is taken seriously. One key aspect of the approach is its very focus on the mundane and sexually inappropriate behaviours embedded in daily life, for example in swimming pools, shopping malls, gyms, etc.; as well as with serious sexual offending (TDI 2007; Kemshall 2008). In addition, TDI attempts to actively engage local communities as ‘participants in, rather than as passive recipients of, public protection’ (TDI 2007: 7). Such engagement may itself reduce the dominant retributive response to sex offenders, and aid their safe, long-term reintegration into the community.

Environmental and opportunity management responses have the potential to respond to a range of offence and offender types, and to engage communities and victims proactively in risk management. Unlike broader public awareness campaigns the approach attempts to ‘skill up’ members of the public to identify and respond positively and effectively to grooming behaviours across a range of settings, and to exercise a constructive vigilance about sexually inappropriate behaviours. In this sense it represents a practical expression of Kelly’s continuum concerns (1988, 2002).

Reintegrative approaches

Reintegration of sex offenders into both society and ‘good lives’ has been the focus of more recent practice innovations. Reintegrative responses stem from a growing disillusion with the community protection paradigm and are rooted in restorative justice (McAlinden 2005; for a full discussion see Kemshall 2008). The most notable examples are Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA); and the ‘Good Lives Model’ (GLM) of intervention with sex offenders. Both examples promote reintegration rather than pure punishment, on the grounds of increased effectiveness and longer-term positive outcomes. Each will be considered in turn.

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA)

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) grew out of negative public reaction to the release of a sex offender into the community, and perceptions that formal supervisory mechanisms could neither successfully reintegrate sex offenders nor guarantee public safety (Wilson 2007; Wilson and Picheca 2005; Wilson
et al
. 2005, 2007). COSA has its roots in faith-based communities agreeing to form circles of support and accountability around a sexual offender, offering on the one hand contact and support, and on the other monitoring and vigilance. The approach takes a broadly restorative and re- integrative approach to sexual offending, and seeks to improve community

safety through the successful reintegration of sex offenders into the community (Wilson
et al
. 2007; for a detailed description of COSA see Correctional Service of Canada 2002; Wilson and Picheca 2005). This model has been adopted in the USA, UK, Netherlands, South Africa and Bermuda. Volunteers are largely from faith-based communities with a proportion having previous experience of corrections and motivated by a sense of altruism (Wilson
et al
. 2007). As Wilson succinctly puts it: ‘Volunteers act as concerned friends or surrogate family members for the core members but with support and accountability set prominently in their minds’ (2007: 37).

COSA have been evaluated in Canada and the UK with positive results. The Canadian Circles have taken particularly high-risk offenders (as determined by validated risk assessment tools), and the evaluations have striven to match COSA subjects with similar offence types and risk levels not in the Circle, i.e. a ‘matched sample’ in so far as ethical constraints allow, or with similarly profiled offenders using actuarial risk score predictions. The original pilot achieved a decrease in sexual offending of 70 per cent ‘in comparison with either matched control subjects or actuarial projections’ (Wilson 2007: 37; Wilson
et al
. 2007), with the UK pilot achieving similar reconviction results in its early stages, although numbers in this evaluation were small, totalling just 16, thus drawing general conclusions is difficult (Quaker Peace and Social Justice 2005, 2008; Bates
et al
. 2007). In addition, the UK evaluation also considered the identification of and response to recidivist behaviours (e.g. ‘grooming’) as well as actual reconviction rates, thus matching on pure recidivism rates is somewhat difficult as parole recalls were also considered.

The Canadian COSA has taken particularly high-risk offenders, but has achieved notable success with sexual recidivism of COSA offenders 70 per cent lower than offenders in a matched sample. In the three instances of sexual recidivism the reoffences were of less severity when matched to risk score predictions, thus achieving a harm reduction function (Wilson
et al
. 2007).

In addition, in a review to inform Scottish criminal justice policy, Kirkwood

and Richley state:

Survey data also indicated that the Circles improved core members’ emotional well-being, helped them to integrate into society, and that core members believed the Circle reduced their chances of reoffending. Regarding community perceptions, a small survey of general members of the community found that 68% of respondents would feel safer if a sex offender in their local area was in a Circle than if he was not.

(2008: 237)

COSA is also well received by professionals, with police and probation services valuing the contribution of Circles to the community risk management of sex offenders (Quaker Peace and Social Justice 2005, 2008), confirmed by Armstrong
et al
.’s survey of key stakeholders in England (2008). In brief:

Circles bring an added dimension in terms of the support and supervision of offenders, as they can help the core members develop positive social relationships and engage in constructive activities that

may reduce re-offending more than traditional treatment approaches. They also highlighted the role that Circles can play in helping core members to integrate into society and that the involvement of the community may help to change simplistic media representations of sexual offenders.

(Kirkwood and Richley 2008: 238)

Armstrong
et al
. (2008) in a review for the Scottish Justice Department found no evidence of negative impact on volunteers, and there is potential for positive benefits, particularly in actively engaging communities in the community management of sex offenders, and in reducing public anxiety and fear.

In the Canadian context Wilson
et al
. (2007) found that 63 per cent of volunteers became aware of COSA through friends or family, and that 40 per cent had previous experience of corrections, with 28 per cent learning about COSA through their faith-based community. Volunteers are characterised by an interest in helping this client group and by a sense of altruism, and of course self-select towards this type of activity. Most have employment or volunteering histories in work with marginal groups. In this sense, they may not be typical of the wider community’s views of sex offenders, more usually characterised by negativity and hostility (Silverman and Wilson 2002). A body of concerned volunteers does not necessarily constitute community engagement.

Whilst COSA has the laudable aim of community engagement and enabling the community to take responsibility for a community issue (Bates
et al
. 2007: 39; Wilson 2007), the extent of this community engagement is questionable. Wilson
et al
. (2002) acknowledge that transferability to larger, more anonymised, communities has been difficult and that ‘larger communities appear to be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to hands-on, community based risk management’ (p. 379). This resonates with other evidence on the problems of transferability of restorative justice approaches from commu- nitarian societies to those with weaker ties and looser networks (McAlinden 2005). However, COSA has certainly been effective in reducing /files/03/60/00/f036000/public/ community anxiety, vigilantism and hostility to sex offenders (Bates
et al
. 2007; Wilson 2007; Wilson
et al
. 2000; Wilson
et al
. 2007). The impact in the UK context is, however, limited. COSA has been largely co-opted to work alongside statutory services, particularly MAPPA, with professionals heavily involved in volunteer selection and training, and in COSA steering groups (Kemshall 2008). Thus COSA is tending to operate at the tertiary level of sexual crime prevention, although it does have the capacity to operate at the secondary.

Good Lives Model

The Good Lives Model stems in large part from the work of Ward and Marshall 2004 (see also Ward and Maruna 2007), and is rooted in a critique of the dominant cognitive behavioural treatment model, and perceived limits to the risk–needs–responsivity paradigm. McCulloch and Kelly characterise GLM as proposing:

a more holistic and constructive way of conceptualising and engaging with offenders, focusing less on individual offender deficits and more on the personal, inter-personal and social contexts required to enable offenders to live a ‘good life’.