involved in reporting sex crimes (eg Gilligan and Akhtar, 2006), that more alleged offenders plead ‘not guilty’ before the courts (Robinson, 2011) and that there is an under-representation of BME offenders on prison-based sex offender programmes (Cowburn and Lavis, 2009). There is low usage by BME communities of the Violent and Sex Offender Register (Kemshall and Weaver, 2012). Very few BME sex offenders are involved in the community-based initiative Circles of Support and Accountability (Cowburn et al, 2015). In attempting to understand this phenomenon, and considering the implications for social work practice, we must look at both racial and ethnic issues. Racial issues establish a foundation for BME mistrust of criminal justice systems. BME groups across the white Western world are over-represented as offenders in criminal justice systems and as prisoners (Gabbidon, 2010; Institute of Race Relations, 2015); such over-representation leads to suspicion that the criminal justice system does not operate equitably.
However, mistrust may only play a part in the disengagement of BME communities from criminal justice provision. In relation to BME people reporting crimes (to white authorities), there are suggestions that to do so would be a betrayal of the ethnic community. Andrew Norfolk (a journalist employed by the UK newspaper The Times), in his evidence to a House of Commons inquiry, stated that young Asian men had told him that they would not report community members who they knew to be sexually harming others (Great Britain, 2013, para 114). Droisen (1989) makes similar observations in relation to ethnicity and community betrayal.
Apart from mistrust and community loyalty, there are questions about the cultural appropriateness of the therapy programmes for sex offenders, not least because they operate from a Western understanding of the individual that ignores the cultural power of family and community commitments (Owusu-Bempah and Howitt, 2000; Cowburn et al, 2008). Moreover, the programmes are delivered in group format, and the management of both racial and ethnic dynamics is a serious challenge for programme providers (Doel and Kelly, 2014, pp 121–3). Also, BME sex offenders have expressed concerns about white group leaders’ abilities to manage therapeutic groups in ways that ensure their safety and show knowledge and sensitivity to their cultures (Patel and Lord, 2001).
Anti-racist social work has a long history (eg Dominelli, 1988), and has adopted a range of theoretical perspectives concerning race and ethnicity. Recent inquiry reports into the sexual exploitation of young people point to social worker fears of being considered racist (Jay, 2014; Bedford, 2015; Casey, 2015). These fears, the reports suggest, inhibit white workers’ attempts to protect vulnerable children. It is not within the scope of this book to explore fully the practice of anti-racist social work, but we recognise its complexity and its relevance to social work with sex offenders. Many years ago, Ahmad (1992) and Robinson (1995) recognised the importance of (white) workers being confident in addressing issues related to diversity, particularly when challenging people of different ethnicities. Components of confidence are self-knowledge, awareness of values, ongoing professional knowledge (Bhatti-Sinclair, 2011) and an ability to engage with both the intellectual and emotional aspects of social work practice. By the end of this book, we hope that readers’ confidence in working with all sex offenders will have developed, and that their professional confidence will have grown.
Structure of book
The book is structured, first, to provide a context for social work practice with sex offenders and then to address specific practice-related issues. Chapter Two introduces readers to theoretical approaches to understanding sex crimes and sex offenders. In Chapter Three, we consider issues relating to sentencing sex offenders and highlight contrasting approaches to punishment and associated penal responses. Chapter Four provides an overview of policies relating to safeguarding and managing sex offenders in the community. Chapters Five and Six address assessment and interventions, respectively. The final chapter draws the themes of the book together by presenting an account of reflexive social work practice with sex offenders.
Summary
• Language, through the expression of values and various forms of knowledge, creates different ways of understanding sex crimes and the people who commit them.
• The value base of the book and how language is to be used throughout the book was clarified.
• News media create distorted and inaccurate understandings of sex offenders (folk devils); social work knowledge extends beyond media representations.
• Denial of the nature and extent of sex crimes is to be found at individual worker, individual offender and societal levels.
• Working with sex offenders affects workers emotionally, physically and psychologically. Potentially, it can affect workers’ personal and professional relationships. Awareness of these impacts is a key component in developing strategies for effective work with sex offenders.
• White constructs of black and Asian sex offenders potentially create racial folk devils. Racial folk devils potentially prevent (white) social workers from engaging constructively with BME communities.
• BME offenders’, victims’ and communities’ engagement with processes of criminal justice appears to be minimal.
• Social work engagement with BME offenders, victims and communities is complex. There are cultural inhibitors that may make it difficult for some social workers to engage with their own ethnic community. Sensitive engagement with the nuances of these issues is essential.
Notes
1 By ‘practice’ in this instance, we are primarily referring to psychologically oriented therapy, but it also crosses over into social work with sex offenders.
2 This term requires some explanation; we use it to refer to Western Europe, North America and Australasia.
Chapter 2 Understanding sex crimes and sex offenders
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to outline and explore the contribution of key academic disciplines to understanding sex crimes and sex offenders. Sociological, biomedical, theological, legal and psychological perspectives are considered. In identifying individual disciplines, we recognise that each discipline is heterogeneous, and that forms of knowledge may be contested within each discipline. Moreover, knowledge within each discipline may be developed from differing epistemological positions (eg an evolutionary psychology account of sex crime differs significantly from a feminist psychological account).
The chapter initially considers victim perspectives. Victims’ experiences are individual, and although a range of studies identify common impacts of violation, no systematised knowledge of sex crimes has been generated from such experiences. These accounts, however, make an important contribution to understanding sex crime and developing law and penal practices via victims’ organisations. This has been particularly important in articulating and asserting victims’ experiences of sex crime. We then move on to academic accounts of sex crimes. Sociological understandings of sex crime move beyond legal definitions (eg feminist accounts of sex crimes, which focus on patriarchy and the problem behaviours of the general population of men), but also analyse the behaviour of convicted populations (eg in studying what helps sex offenders desist from offending). The term ‘theological’ is used to recognise that, through history, various (theocentric) religions in different parts of the world have made statements about the nature of various sexual behaviours; proscribed behaviours are defined as sins. In secular societies, crimes are defined
