Social Work with Sex Offenders

Making a Difference

Cowburn, Malcolm, Myers, Steve

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781447358787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Travail social

This topical book engages with a wide range of issues related to social work practice with people who have sexually offended. It addresses the emotional impacts of 'facing the sex offender', the importance of values and ethics in practice, and reviews popular and academic understandings of sex offenders and sex crimes. Its accessible style and use of practice based learning exercises will help readers to reflect on theory, practice and developing emotional resilience.

Chapter 1
Introduction: constructing sex crimes and sex offenders

Introduction

Social work with people who sexually harm others is complex and demanding. It involves feelings, thoughts and actions, and is imbued with values. It occurs in a range of settings and is undertaken by qualified, trainee and unqualified social workers. A social work approach incorporates values, psychological perspectives and consideration of sexual violence as part of a social context. Social work is not an activity undertaken by isolated workers; it takes place within agencies that have policies and procedures to guide practice. This book is not a replacement for official guidance; rather, it seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of issues that make up social work practice. Practice issues are located in the social, political, administrative and welfare context of the UK, primarily focusing on England and Wales; while policy and procedural issues may remain geographically specific, other matters have a wider currency.

Social work is currently undergoing radical change in the UK due to central government initiatives designed to address perceived (albeit contested) shortcomings in education and practice. This means that any description of how social work is delivered is contingent and subject to significant caveats, including the increasing tendency for the four constituent nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) to develop their own health and welfare services and structures. In addition to this, there is a move to more regionalised approaches to welfare delivery within England itself, devolving increased public service financial responsibility to newly constituted political bodies that will take localised decisions on what is the best model to meet their needs. Inevitably, there will be a fragmentation of structures that social workers find themselves practising in, which may lead to the development of very different approaches and job expectations.

Social workers currently work in what can be broadly termed as ‘statutory’ services (local government and some charitable organisations with legal mandates to provide specific services, as well as criminal justice agencies) and private, voluntary or independent (PVI) organisations. The former tend to have duties placed on them for delivering core elements of policy, whereas the PVI sector provides services that are contracted or seen as complementary, although this distinction has become increasingly blurred with a decrease in state-delivered services and an increase in contracting out services to the PVI sector.

Social workers have tended to specialise in working either with children (and their families) or working with adults, a distinction that has grown over the previous 30 years and looks likely to continue through, for example, the appointment of separate chief social workers for children and for adults in England (Department of Health, 2014).

The landscape is further complicated by those who focus on mental health and learning disability, which constitute separate fields of practice. Criminal justice is also a separate social work domain in England, although it is seen as a core social work activity in Scotland. Increasingly, adult services in England are being organised and delivered within overall health provision and it is likely that social workers with adults will be part of an integrated health and community social care framework.

Wherever social workers are located, they work in multidisciplinary structures to deliver their service, and this is often supported by explicit policy recommendations. A range of professionals with different skills is encouraged to work in complementary ways in order to enhance welfare and to safeguard vulnerable people. This recognises that people have multiple needs that are best met by applying appropriate skills and knowledge, and social workers are often at the forefront of making assessments and judgements about the required level of intervention and resources. As we see in later chapters, responses to sexual offending and the safeguarding of vulnerable people require social workers to collaborate with criminal justice, health, education and other welfare professionals. Throughout the book, we explore the particular skills, values and knowledge that social workers utilise to ensure that individual and community safety is enhanced.

The aims of this book are:

■ to recognise the emotional context of working with people who sexually harm others;

■ to consider values and ethics underpinning practice;

■ to reflect critically on current theories, research, policy and practice in relation to people who have sexually harmed others; and

■ to explore the role and practices of social workers in working with sexual offenders in order to safeguard vulnerable people.

While these aims address the theory, methods and organisational practices of social work, they also recognise the importance of emotions in practising social work. As Olive Stevenson (2013, p 1) notes: ‘To be an effective social worker, there has to be a dynamic interplay between emotion and intellect’. This chapter considers the intricate interplay between feelings and knowledge in the practice of social work with people who sexually offend. The first area we consider relates to our values and the language used throughout the book. This involves recognising the constructive nature of language. The language we choose to use embodies our view of social work, sexual violence and the people that harm others sexually. We outline the values that inform the shape and content of the book, and we establish how key terms are used. In the next section, we explore popular knowledge about sex crimes and sex offenders as presented in the news media. The news media is a key source of (mis)information that shapes popular understandings of social and political issues. Using the framework of ‘folk devils’ and ‘moral panics’, we encourage a critical attitude to media reportage and raise some questions about social reactions to sex crimes. A key social reaction linked to popular knowledge is denial. Denial in relation to sex crimes has many manifestations; we explore personal, societal and professional forms of not recognising sexual violence, its prevalence or its impacts. Denial is both a cognitive and an emotional response to uncomfortable information; in the penultimate section of this chapter, we explore the emotional impacts of working with sex offenders. The final section of this chapter addresses issues of race, ethnicity and sex offending. These issues evoke strong feelings and social prejudices, and present distinctive challenges for social workers. We explore issues of representation, racism and the difficulties of engagement with criminal justice services.

Values and terminologies

‘Value(s)’ is a nebulous term potentially covering areas as diverse as economics, theology, philosophy, business studies, medicine and all of the social sciences, to name but a few. It is a slippery concept to engage with and can leave more confusion and less clarity in its wake. However, Sarah Banks (2006, p 6) provides a gentle introduction: ‘“values” can be regarded as particular types of belief that people hold about what is regarded worthy or valuable’. This section clarifies the terms we use throughout the book and why we use them. Gregory and Holloway (2005) have shown how language socially constructs social work, the social worker and the people that social workers are required to professionally engage with. This means that the language used in legislation, social work texts, social work reports and social work records creates, through description and analysis, the social work role, tasks and methods. It also constructs the social worker and the different groups of people s/he engages with (eg some people are portrayed as being vulnerable, some as alienated and some as criminal). Gregory and Holloway (2005) identify three forms of language through which this occurs: ‘moral’, ‘therapeutic’ and ‘managerial’. Social work is variously described in terms that highlight its moral, therapeutic or managerial purpose. We explore these (and other) perspectives in the next chapter; however, it is important to recognise that the language we use is never value-free. Clarifying terminology is therefore not merely a process of using the ‘right’ language; rather, it is a constructive process that embodies particular value orientations of social work.

Underpinning value base of the book

Social work values are concerned with respect for the individual; these values recognise the equal moral worth of every human being. Social work practice seeks to respect and sustain individual dignity. Closely linked to this is social work’s commitment to social justice; unlike most professions, social work explicitly includes the social context in its statement of values (IFSW and IASSW, 2004). Social justice in the context of sex crimes is a central concern of this book. This has implications for the language we use and the way in which we construct not only social work and the social worker, but also sex crimes, the people that commit them and the people that are harmed by them.

To aspire to social justice requires scrutiny of the knowledge(s) that underpin the formulation of social policy and the development of penal practices. Most sex crimes are never reported and most people who inflict sexual harm on others are unconvicted, yet public concern about ‘sex offenders’ is high. Social and penal policy is shaped around what is known about convicted sex offenders. This knowledge is necessarily partial and limited, yet these limitations are rarely acknowledged.

A commitment to social justice carries a requirement to understand sexual harm through a range of academic disciplines, including sociology, anthropology and psychology. Our understanding of sexual harm is summarised thus:

■ Men and/or boys commit most, but not all, sex crimes. In most societies, and communities, culture and values privilege male power and denigrate women and girls (patriarchy). Such cultures are supportive of sex crimes and minimise both the extent and the harm caused by sex crimes.

■ People who sexually harm others can be male, female or have indeterminate gender. They can be of any ethnicity, social class or faith group. Many offenders may not have a faith. They can have any sexuality. Sexually harmful behaviour can be demonstrated by children and young people even when they are below the age where this is legally a crime. Intellectual and physical ability is no determinant of whether or not someone becomes a sexual offender.

■ Victim-survivors of sexual harm can be male, female or have indeterminate gender. They can be of any ethnicity, social class or faith group. Many victim-survivors may not have a faith. They can be of any age or sexuality. They can be of various learning and physical abilities.

This book adopts a challenging approach in relation to some of the conventional forms of knowledge surrounding sex offending and sex offenders. Throughout the book, we highlight the importance of critically examining the values that underpin both knowledge of, and practice with, sex offenders; nowhere is this more important than in the language we use to discuss sexual harm, the people that perpetrate it and the people who are hurt.

Naming the person committing sexual harm

The use of the phrase ‘sexual offences’ needs qualification, as does the term ‘sex offender’. Offences are acts that are both defined and proscribed by law. Legal definitions of (sex) crimes embody the values of dominant groups in particular societies at specific times. Behaviours defined in law as sexual offences vary significantly across time and culture. However, legally defining sexual offences does not guarantee that a person will feel able to report the sexual harm they have experienced. A study by Percy and Mayhew (1997), using a number of international victim self-report surveys, estimated that there are 15 times more unreported sex offenders than reported ones; in 2011, Rape Crisis South London (2011) suggested that only 11% of women who are victims of serious sexual assault report the crime. Therefore, under-reporting remains a constant problem.

However, once an offence has been reported, the vast majority of reports do not result in anyone being convicted of an offence. Court processes differ across countries, but attrition is an international phenomenon. Approximately 10% of cases reported to the police result in a criminal conviction (for further details, see Figure 2.2, p 37). Thus, to write or speak of ‘sex offenders’, with the implication that these people are defined by a criminal conviction, is problematic insofar as this excludes many people who may have harmed others but not been convicted.

Conversely, some innocent people may be convicted of sexual offences (see Locke, 2013; Falselyaccused.co.uk, 2015). This is a very difficult area because social workers may be required to engage with people on the basis of their conviction and a person who maintains his/her innocence will be unable to engage in any formal risk assessment process because this requires her/him to reflect on their offending behaviour. While issues related to this group of people are not centrally considered in this book, we suggest that social workers should advise ‘offenders’ who maintain their innocence to seek legal representation in order to challenge their conviction.

The aforementioned complexities pose challenges for the sensitive, but economic, use of language in this book. A person who contravenes the law relating to sexual offences is a ‘sex offender’, so named because they have been convicted of the offence in a criminal court. However, many people sexually harm others without their actions being reported and the offender being convicted; in such cases, the harmful person is known as the ‘perpetrator’. Social workers work with both offenders and perpetrators. In some cases, a person accused of a sexual offence may be innocent and yet be convicted; unless the conviction is overturned by a court, this person remains (technically) an ‘offender’. The word ‘offender’ is, however, problematic for (at least) two reasons: it dehumanises the person referred to and it describes her/him solely in terms of their past actions. Yet, completely avoiding the use of the word ‘offender’ in this book is stylistically problematic. We use the term consciously, recognising its shortcomings. Throughout the book, we also use other phrases, as we have done in this introduction, to dilute the impact of the ‘offender’ word.

Naming the person harmed by sex offences

When referring to the person harmed by sex offences, we use the words ‘victim’ and ‘victim-survivor’. We are aware that the former term is resisted or rejected by many people who have experienced sexual harm. Many prefer the term ‘survivor’ or ‘thriver’, or, indeed, choose not to name themselves in relation to the sexual harm they have experienced. However, for the purposes of this book, it is important that we identify the person that is harmed as a victim. Many offenders deny that there is a victim involved in their actions, and potentially this denial may be inadvertently adopted by social workers.

Naming acts of sexual harm

We use a variety of terms to name acts of sexual harm, including ‘sexual violence’; we take the view that whether an offence involves physical contact or not, it is violating, and can thus be regarded as being sexually violent. We do not engage in the semantic niceties of ‘How violent is violent?’ A victim’s personal experience of violation/violence is not personally comparable with any other violence; to make such comparison fa...