ABSTRACT
The age-crime curve, dating from the early 19th century, has been described as the most robust finding in criminology. It has long been used to describe desistance from general crime over the life span. It is conceptualized as a process that includes lapses, relapses and recovery and has shown conclusively that almost every criminal desists at some point. This fact has been consistently resisted by those professionals working with persons convicted of sexual offences although some evidence from forensic psychology indicates otherwise. This chapter examines the reasons for this resistance. First, moral panic surrounding sexual offending creates fear and promotes the fiction that sexual offenders are dangerous, mentally ill, untreatable and inevitably recidivistic. Second, an industry has been created to treat and manage sexual offenders. An obsession with risk has developed that has created an elaborate edifice of laws and regulations intended to socially control this population. These are based on fear of negative outcomes. The result has been that it is virtually impossible to not be a sexual offender. This chapter offers policy recommendations that could markedly reduce the negative effect of these social controls and still permit natural processes of desistance to proceed.
