ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an outline of the book as a whole as well as an overview of each of the chapter’s contributions to the main argument. The central argument is that sex offending, in particular child sex offending, is a complex area for policy makers, theorists and practitioners, however much the discourse, debate and policy initiatives tend to regard it as a homogenised entity and underplay much of its diversity and complexity. It is far from a new issue but one that has been ‘discovered’ and has risen to prominence in the last 30 years. A focus on punishment, treatment, intervention or public protection by the major state agencies alone has reinforced sex offending and sex offenders as problems that are essentially ‘other’ to society and discouraged local and national engagement with the real scale and scope of sexual offending, in particular child sex offending in the UK. It will be argued that resources have tended to be focused on assessment and protection in the public domain or on containment in custodial and semi-custodial settings at the expense of both engaging the public and critically exploring how communities and individuals might better protect themselves. As Nash (2006: 21) notes: ‘Sex offenders have been seen as qualitatively different from other offenders. They are “not like us”; they do things that are not normal and are not forgivable.’
