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This paper aims to understand landlords’ attitudes toward applicants with histories of sex offenses and landlords’ willingness to broaden eligibility criteria for tenancy.

A convenience sample of 50 landlords in Connecticut were interviewed. The content of interviews was analyzed to examine how often a landlord would be open to renting to individuals on the sex offender registry and what conditions affect their decisions.

In total, 44% of landlords would not rent to adults with histories of sex offenses under any circumstance, but 8% of landlords reported they would rent to such individuals and an additional 36% of landlords were open to it with a high threshold for other indicators of good tenancy such as stable housing history, good credit and timely rental payments.

These findings not only illustrate the real-world challenges in finding housing for adults with histories of sex offenses but also highlight opportunities in working with landlords.

There has been little examination of housing adults with sex offenders from the perspective of landlords, which is important to understand to address this difficult and sensitive issue.

Purpose: This study is concerned with media representation of crime in the Israeli press. It examines the pattern of offenses reported in two daily newspapers of seemingly different characteristics, the “elitist” Haaretz and the “popular” Israel Hayom. Methodology/approach: Crime reports appeared in the news pages during November 2016 were content analyzed in both newspapers by using a coding scheme, which operationalized several variables relating to type of crime, characteristics of offenders and victims, and court proceedings. Findings: Violent and sex offenses featured disproportionately in the news reports in both newspapers, while conventional property offenses were under-reported relative to their prevalence in official crime statistics. In terms of the characteristics of offenders and victims, the vast majority of offenders portrayed in crime stories were adult Jewish males. Women were more likely to appear as victims of crime rather than perpetrators, and more likely to appear as victims of sex offenses rather than other offenses. Research limitations: This study was based on an analysis of crime stories which appeared in two newspapers during one-month period of time. Future research should extend the sample size and collect data from a longer period of time and from additional media outlets. Originality/value: Media coverage of crime stories has not yet been researched in Israel. Beyond the interest in the Israeli case or the potential contribution to comparative global knowledge, the value of the study may lie in expanding the lens of scholarship of media’s construction of crime.

The objective of this study was to investigate attitudes towards individuals who commit different types of sex offence, with subsidiary aims of exploring the influence of respondent sex and the influence of personal experience of sexual abuse. The sample comprised 139 participants (49 students and 90 forensic staff). All were provided with a vignette depicting a specific type of sex offence, and asked to complete a scale assessing attitudes towards sex offenders (Hogue, 1993). Forensic staff were more likely than students to view sex offenders in positive terms, viewing them as individuals who could be rehabilitated. Participants who reported being victims of sexual abuse, or that someone close to them had been abused, viewed sex offenders less negatively than non‐victims. Men demonstrated less positive attitudes towards child incest and child indecent assault offenders than to stranger rapists. Women held more positive views towards sex offenders than men, and this was consistent across offence type.

To explain the persistent abhorrent perspective society holds of sex offenders, the concept of sex offenders, the evolution of salient sex offender legislation, and the relationships between sex offenders and social control with a focus on the current and emerging socio-legal issues are discussed. As one of the most vilified criminal offenders, sex offenders are inextricably related to social control as demonstrated by the disproportionately imposed legal restrictions they have experienced compared to offenders without a history of sex crimes. Public support of excessive punishments toward sex offenders has been bolstered by societal depictions that have induced perceptions of sex offenders as monstrous beings.

Aversions toward sex offenders unfold when it is perceived that the solidarity of society is dissolute and volatile. During these periods of perceived social disintegration, mass media emerges as a source that can contextualize the depraved actions of sex offenders, though the media have arguably perverted their role as an educator and contributed to misinformation. Education and revised evaluative assessments of sexual recidivism are suggested as approaches to redefine how sex offenders should be portrayed, as a heterogeneous group of individuals that vary in their amenability to rehabilitative treatment.

Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.

Criminal background checks are used widely in the U.S. to screen applicants for employment, licenses, housing, and government benefits. State lawmakers instituted many of these requirements, ostensibly with the aim of managing criminal risk in various areas of social life. The present study examines the development of this legal form. Drawing from legislative discourse in the Illinois General Assembly, this study puts forward an endogenous account of constructing criminal risk, showing that lawmakers justified new background check laws largely as a means of filling security loopholes created by prior legislation. While the laws respond to identified criminal risks, the process of expanding background checks itself draws attention to other dimensions of vulnerability, necessitating the addition of new screening requirements. Incremental expansions are further justified on the basis of background screening’s low cost, which, lawmakers argue, creates an obligation to extend the requirements wherever vulnerabilities are identified, particularly when children are potential victims and sex offenders the possible villains. The study shows how security and vulnerability are mutually generative in the area of background screening and discusses implications for understanding this legal form in the context of contemporary American penality.

Purpose – This chapter explores claims of social problem workers in criminal justice and mental health with regard to how to manage males who are identified as or self-identify as both victims and perpetrators (V/Ps) of sexual abuse. We also examine the claims of V/Ps with regard to how they manage their dual status.

Methodology – This chapter is based on an action research project on intervention services for V/Ps in Ontario, Canada. Our data include literature reviews, interviews with intervention professionals, V/P narratives, and a transcription of a stake-holder's workshop.

Findings – Intervention workers whose mandate is offender risk management state they give little attention to victimization-related issues of V/Ps, whereas workers in victims’ services often state that adult V/Ps are not covered under their mandate. This suggests that the status of offender is the master status for adult V/Ps. Our V/P narratives recount efforts at self-management and some V/Ps and intervention professionals have expressed interest in the possibility of developing programs specially designed for V/Ps.

Practical Implications – An examination of issues related to the dual status of sexual abuse V/Ps suggests that V/Ps may require special services that cannot be provided by existing programs for perpetrators and victims.

Originality/Value of Paper – Studies of social problem work might benefit from considering not only professionals’ viewpoints but also those of their clients. This chapter explores new intervention models (GLM and RJ) that incorporate ethical concerns based on a rights perspective (“moral repair”) and the experiential concerns of V/Ps.

This critical review considers the limitations and advantages of the clinical, actuarial and structured clinical judgement approaches as they are applied to the assessment of risk in general and sex‐offenders in particular. It concludes by endorsing an inclusive approach, acknowledging that a central ethic of clinical practice is that it should be based on a current knowledge of the research literature (Singer, cited in Douglas et al. 1999).

There has been growing concern among stakeholders about individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and sex offending as research supports an indirect association. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, bring more awareness of the sexuality and deviant/criminal sexual behavior among those with ASD to stakeholders in the criminal justice system (CJS); second, demonstrate that much of the deviant or sexual offending behavior exhibited among those with ASD is often a manifestation of their ASD symptoms and not malice; and third, demonstrate the necessity to address specific needs of individuals with ASD who enter the CJS due to criminal sexual behavior.

This paper provides an overview of the ASD symptomology, including the diagnostic changes, a review of the literature on ASD and sexuality, which includes deviant sexual behavior and sexual offending.

The author linked examples of deviant or sexual behavior in the research literature to the ASD symptomology and described how the symptomology explains such behavior.

Sexual offending among those with ASD has received little research outside the mental health field. This review is of particular importance to those in the CJS unfamiliar with ASD, as they should handle them differently with regard to formal interviewing, measures of competency, capacity, and sentencing.