Understanding the Community Management of High Risk Sex Offenders by H. Kemshall

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Maidenhead : Open University Press ( 2008 ) 170pp. £65.00hb ISBN 978-0-335-21999-5 £21.99pb ISBN 978-0-335-21998-8 Recent years have seen dramatic changes to the ways in which offenders are managed within the community. Discourses centred on ‘risk’, ‘dangerousness’ and ‘public-protection’ have seemingly come to dominate practice in many Anglophone countries. With great skill and clarity Hazel Kemshall picks apart these developments and challenges the reader to view them from a variety of angles, incorporating criminological, psychological and sociological research and theory. Appropriately focusing on sexual and violent offenders throughout, Kemshall presents literature from a range of disciplines and locales with both concision and insight, to produce a remarkably informative distillation of a large and complex body of research. Firstly, various paradigms of offender management are critically described and tensions between the adoption of protective and rehabilitative practices are highlighted, thus introducing what will become an important framework of analysis in later chapters. A consideration of the various ways risk and dangerousness have come to be understood leads on to a presentation of issues, pragmatic and ethical, surrounding the accurate assessment of risk. Kemshall then brings her vast experience in evaluating multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) to a discussion of the increase in inter-agency partnership and communication. Research evaluating risk-management strategies and interventions is presented, and the concomitant methodological limitations acknowledged. Rather than simply critiquing the status quo of offender management, however, Kemshall also reflects upon the potential to be found in alternative, rehabilitation-focused, approaches, such as the ‘Good Lives Model’. In the final two chapters, Kemshall gets to the very heart of the issues and dilemmas facing contemporary offender management. The relative importance of offenders' human rights, the consequences of different community notification practices, and other important ethical issues are meaningfully outlined. Finally, Kemshall considers the extent to which community protection and reintegrative models of offender management have been, or can yet be, combined, in a conclusion more thought-provoking and insightful than one might expect from an introductory text. Indeed, the challenge provided by Kemshall's timely thesis makes this book a highly recommended resource for any experienced practitioner, policy maker or academic wishing to engage intellectually with this subject. What makes this book truly exciting, for this reader, however, is the seamless and highly accessible way in which Kemshall integrates and gives credence to such a variety of literature. Throughout, the author cogently describes broad characterisations of criminological thought and penal policy, yet not once fails to remember that the lived realities of those ‘on the ground’ may run quite contrary to these apparent sea-changes. Sociological theorising and outcome-based evaluations of interventions are intelligently balanced with reference to qualitative, process-based research, succinctly capturing the perspectives of both service users and providers. In such a way, Kemshall succeeds in providing a highly nuanced and grounded appraisal of the apparent ‘rise of risk-focussed community protection’ (p.130) that will resonate with, challenge and inform practitioners and scholars of every level.