The knowledge base of the risk factors that sex offenders face in the community and can cause them to reoffend is vast, yet the focus, and therefore the funding, has always been targeted at creating policies that exclude and ostracize sex offenders from mainstream living. Fear, perpetuated by the media, has played an integral role in allowing policies to pass that focus on punitive methods, maintaining the misconception that this population pose a serious threat to society upon release from incarceration. Whereas there is an abundance of information that demonstrates sex offenders have low recidivism rates, those in power refuse to acknowledge academic research which supports reintegrating and rehabilitating individuals that have committed …show more content…
Emotions take over and research, science, and rationality are ignored. This is in part not only because the western worldview of sex is as a private, secret undertaking carried out when one is most vulnerable, but in addition, it is a commonly held view that children are to be protected. Therefore, when an individual is abused, volatile reactions are evoked (Wright, 2009). Many in society feel hatred and anger towards those who commit sex offenses, so using the notion of retribution is justified and welcomed. It is this widely accepted view and shared sentiments within society that has allowed policymakers to have outstanding support for policies such as SORNA. Furthermore, although there are copious amounts of evidence to the contrary, the media, the public, and the policymakers still inc1orrectly support that the principal threat of becoming a victim of a sex crime is from a convicted sex offender. Despite data demonstrating that an individual is more likely to be a victim of a sex crime by someone known to them, the rare incidents of stranger crimes drives the panic and fuels the misconception that released sex offenders pose a massive risk to us