This book offers a fresh perspective on treating a population that is often demonized by policymakers, the public, and even clinicians. The authors argue that most sex offenders are ‘people like us, ‘ with the potential to lead meaningful, law-abiding lives—if given a chance and appropriate support. They describe an empirically and theoretically grounded rehabilitation approach, the Good Lives Model, which can be integrated with the assessment and intervention approaches that clinicians already use. Drawing on the latest knowledge about factors promoting desistance from crime, the book discusses how encouraging naturally occurring desistance processes, and directly addressing barriers to community reintegration, can make treatment more effective and long lasting.
Table of Content
I. General Issues
1. Introduction
II. The Criminological Perspective
2. Defining and Measuring Desistance
3. The Age–Crime Curve: A Brief Overview
4. Theoretical Perspectives on Desistance
5. Factors Influencing Desistance
6. Two Major Theories of Desistance
III. The Forensic Psychological Perspective
7. Do Sex Offenders Desist?
8. Sex Offender Treatment and Desistance
IV. Reentry and Reintegration
9. Barriers to Reentry and Reintegration
10. Overcoming Barriers to Reentry and Reintegration
V. Recruitment
11. The Unknown Sex Offenders: Bringing Them in from the Cold
12. Blending Theory and Practice: A Criminological Perspective
VI. Desistance-Focused Intervention
13. The Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation: Basic Assumptions, Etiological Commitments, and Practice Implications
14. The Good Lives Model and Desistance Theory and Research: Points of Convergence
15. The Good Lives–Desistance Model: Assessment and Treatment
VII. Where to from Here?
16. Dignity, Punishment, and Human Rights: The Ethics of Desistance
17. Moral Strangers or One of Us?: Concluding Thoughts
About the author
D. Richard Laws, Ph D, until his death in 2020, was Director of Pacific Behavioural Assessment in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He was a past president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. He held adjunct faculty positions at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and was Honourary Professor at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Dr. Laws was known in the field of sexual deviation as a developer of assessment procedures and behavior therapies.
Tony Ward, Ph D, is Head of School and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research interests include cognition in offenders, rehabilitation and reintegration processes, and ethical issues in forensic psychology. He has published extensively in these areas and has over 280 academic publications.
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