Introduction
The prevalence of sexual violence has become a major social and public health issue throughout the United States and globally. The expression “sexual violence” encompasses various abusive behaviors, including sexual acts, attempted sexual actions, unwelcome sexual statements and utterances, coerced sexual approaches, physical injury connected to sexual, and intimidation. Forced sexual activities that do not involve penetration are regarded as sexual assault rather than a more severe crime of rape. Numerous pieces of legislation passed or enacted throughout the United States deal with the problem of sexual-based violence. While the sexual offense is terrible, the study focuses on the most effective tools or methods, assessments, therapies, and legislative measures for dealing with sexual crimes.
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)in early 1994 as a component of the Violent Crimes Control-based and Law Enforcement Act. The purpose of this Act was to broaden the scope of legal measures available to fight violence towards women and protect ladies who had been the victims of violent assault. Furthermore, it improved the prosecutions and investigations of sex offenses by permitting enhanced imprisonment of repetitive federal sexual-based offenders or predators. The law also mandated restitution to victims of predefined federal sex offenses. It approved grant funding to local, state, and tribal-based law enforcement agencies to prosecute and investigate sexual-based criminal activities against women. Each of these provisions was intended to make it easier to conduct investigations and prosecute any sexual crimes performed against women or ladies.
The law established new offenses and punishments for the contravention of a protection-oriented order and hounding. The law acted harshly when an abuser traversed a state border to hurt or pester the victims or compelled victims to traverse a state border under extreme pressure and afterward physically injured the victim throughout the moment of committing a violent criminal offense. These new offenses and punishments were enacted as part of the bill (Hanson et al., 2018). The law introduced additional provisions that make it mandatory for jurisdictions and states to implement protective orders issued by other regions, states, and tribes. The Act made it possible to give repeated federal sexual offenders harsher sentences.
The practical evaluation of sexual-based violence within the United States is attributable, in part, to the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which included the sex offenders registration and notifications act. The program lays out a complete set of guidelines for sexual offender registries and reporting systems. Moreover, the law encompasses a broader range of sexual offenders and sexual offenses and expands the jurisdictions wherein the overall registration is needed to include federally-based recognized communities. Furthermore, the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) requires sex offenders to furnish more detailed registration information/data and appear personally at regular intervals to authenticate and amend their records (Drury, 2021). The International Megan’s Law of 2016, the Military Sexual Offender Reporting Act of 2015, and the Keeping the Internet Safe from Sexual Predators Act of 2008 are all legislative acts that have proven effective regarding sexual offender and registration-based law.
Specialized Supervision
Sexual offenders can benefit from specialized supervision because it gives them the tools they need to keep tabs on their behavior and make changes with the help of their support system. Parole and probation officials who have received specialized training in supervising sexual offenders are used to assist with the growing number of sexual offense charges. The system employs technical methods for monitoring sex offenders, such as collaborative treatment, GPS tracking, and other supervision techniques (Wijetunga et al., 2018). One recent study showed that several states adopt specialized supervision techniques to control the threat posed by sexual offenders or predators. Technical supervision takes a containment strategy to reduce sexual-based recidivism, which sets it apart from other methods of dealing with sexual offenses.
Electronic Monitoring, Including Global-Based Positioning Systems
Electronic monitoring uses GPS to track offenders’ whereabouts and acts as another sexual offender’s monitoring tool for keeping tabs on sex offenders. Technologies that rely on global positioning systems have been utilized initially to combat various criminal offenses. However, earlier forms of electronic-based monitoring relied on radio transmitters and remote monitoring stations, making them relatively passive and making it difficult for a criminal to escape. GPS is an effective remote monitoring technique since it can keep tabs on the sexual offender’s whereabouts in actual time and offer precise location data. Inmates who were required to wear passive electrical monitoring equipment or proactive global positioning system-oriented monitoring gadgets showed a low risk of recidivism (Hanson et al., 2018). This GPS method was effective and assisted in combating sex offenders.
Circles of Support and Accountability
The Circles of Support and accountability is another tool for assessing how well community members can help sexual offenders. Therefore, using a self-monitoring program, sex offenders are assisted in accessing community-based resources and held accountable for their actions. This step allows offenders to complete their legal supervision successfully. The entire circle of assistance and accountability is considered one promising efficient strategy for sexual offender treatment in the nation (Schmucker&Lösel, 2017). Most sexual offenders found to have a good effect on other volunteers were involved throughout the support/assistance and overall accountability circles. Benefits included elevated feelings of self-worth, increased participation in efforts to improve public security, and encouragement of restorative justice initiatives and enhanced care for sexual offenders.
The Abels Assessment for Sexual Interest (AASI)
The ASSI tool can measure a visual reaction-based time of sexual interests. A self-report quiz also determines how sexually interested, active, or paraphilic someone is under the ASSI tool. Interests in a specific person or persons are all that this ASSI instrument measures, and neither group nor aggregate behavior is captured in any way. Evidence suggests that the ASSI-3 is an effective tool for diagnosing and treating sexual interest issues across both women and men. The ASSI tool equips clinicians with various techniques to better inform their psychological evaluations in consolidating valuable data into a comprehensive report.
The Clinical Polygraph
Following a sequence of questionnaires, a clinical-oriented instrument captures the subject’s sympathetic nervous system’s reactions, like blood pressure, pulse rates, galvanic skin conductivity due to perspirations, temperature variations, and breathing patterns. Therefore, the tool assumes that truthful or incorrect answers cause specific response-oriented patterns. Both juvenile and adult sex offenders could well be interviewed with the help of this evaluation tool. Experts have warned against using this technique on children younger than 13, children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or people with severe mental health concerns.
The Minnesota Sexual Offenders Screening Tool (MSOST)
The MSOST is a sixteen-item risk-based assessment tool designed for the entire Minnesota Department/Agency of Correction (MDOC) to give empirically focused risk estimations for sexual-based recidivism towards male sexual offenders behind bars (Sacco, 2018). Despite its widespread success in its home state and neighboring North Dakota, Canada, and Ontario, the MSOST failed to outperform probability in recent research conducted in Arizona.
Static-99
The entire static-99 is a predictive scale made up of items that measure fixed characteristics, like prior convictions and upbringing, that are associated with the male adult likelihood of receiving sexual beliefs for a subsequent offense. This resource is only for use with male sex offenders who are at least eighteen. The prediction accuracy results demonstrated by the evaluation tool are mediocre (Hanson et al., 2017). Moreover, the assessment may not capture all hazards related to sexual offenses; thus, evaluators may consider other variables. Participants of Static-99 remain subject to the authority of an advisory board tasked with reviewing and vetting submitted content and establishing rules for how the questions should be answered. Since it delivers adequate data, the Static-99 would be the preferred risk assessment tool for sex offenders.
Conclusion
Measurable outcomes tend to corroborate this approach, but measuring the overall performance of sex offenders’ law tools remains challenging by bringing about a system-level transition plan. For instance, various regulatory innovations have enabled prosecutors to pursue sexual violence or assault cases while fostering community-based therapy and rehabilitation plans. The latter has motivated the decrease in sexual crime occurrences in society. The general public and government alike have recently paid much attention to sex offenders. At least some of this can be attributed to the devastating effects sexual offenses have on their victims and society. Governments, practitioners, and perhaps the general public have recognized sex perpetrators or offenders as a distinct subset of criminals requiring specialized approaches to their management.
References
Drury, A. J., DeLisi, M., & Elbert, M. (2021). Federal sex offender registration and notification act (SORNA) offenders: Sexual versatility, criminal careers, and supervision outcomes. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 11(4), 357–369. Web.
Hanson, R. K., Babchishin, K. M., Helmus, L. M., Thornton, D., & Phenix, A. (2017). Communicating the results of criterion-referenced prediction measures: Risk categories for the Static-99R and Static-2002R sexual offender risk assessment tools. Psychological Assessment, 29(5), 582.
Hanson, R. K., Harris, A. J., Letourneau, E., Helmus, L. M., & Thornton, D. (2018). Reductions in risk based on time offense-free in the community: Once a sexual offender, not always a sexual offender. Psychology, Public Policy, and law, 24(1), 48. Web.
Sacco, L. N. (2018). The violence against women act: Overview, legislation, and federal funding. Congressional Research Service. Web.
Schmucker, M., &Lösel, F. (2017). Sexual offender treatment for reducing recidivism among convicted sex offenders: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 13(1), 1-75. Web.
Wijetunga, C., Nijdam-Jones, A., Rosenfeld, B., Martinez, R., & Cruise, K. R. (2018). Using the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol–Revised to assess psychopathy: A preliminary investigation. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 45(4), 483-502. Web.