Governing magazine calls California's Chelsea's Law, passed after the rape and murder of San Diego area teen Chelsea King, a "rational, thoughtful" measure. That was an unexpected outcome, because many of the approaches that states take to prevent sex crimes are based more on fears than hard evidence. Chelsea's Law began with a focus on tougher sentences and evolved into a “containment model” that researchers in the field describe as the most promising approach to reduce sex offender recidivism.
The approach couples mandatory treatment with intensive monitoring and regular lie-detector tests. While state policies often treat all offenders the same regardless of the nature of their crimes, the containment model is different. Parole officers and therapists place restrictions on offenders and pursue a treatment strategy based on their individual situations. Now California may mend some of the flaws of its earlier Jessica's Law on sex offender residences and tracking.
Posted by Sam Caldwell
Sunday, November 14, 2010 06:08
If the California approach to anything on the subject of Criminal Justice were effective, the state would not have the nation’s HIGHEST recidivism rates. On the subject of ‘sex offender’ containment…where is the underlying justification?
Sex offender recidivism is much lower than most other felony offenders, as demonstrated by the collection of nationwide recidivism data spanning the years 1983 to 2010 found at http://recidivism.me.
Posted by realreform
Thursday, November 04, 2010 08:26
It’s about time that they started differentiating between sexual offenders. A large percentage of sexual offenders never hurt anyone at all and have no victim whatsoever. I am talking about the 19 or 20 year old guy who hooked up consentually with a 15 or 16 year old, or for chatting on the internet with someone “posing” as a minor, or for downloading a pic of a naked teen on kazaa or limewire, or for urinating in public or streaking or flashing or peeping tom, or for prostituting or picking one up, or for having oral or anal sex in any southern state because it is considered a “crime against nature” or some other offense where there was no victim at all. These people shouldn’t even be on any sort of registry in the first place.