Citation

MacVean A. Crime Prev. Community Safety 2000; 2(4): 7-18.

Affiliation

Serious and Organised Crime Unit, Home Office, UK

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group -- Palgrave-Macmillan)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper examines current police policy and practice in assessing and managing the risks paedophiles pose to children. It focuses on the complex relationship between legislative and policy frameworks, in this case the Sex Offenders Act 1997 and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and how these are adapted and applied in different contexts to control the behaviour of paedophiles. Drawing on a study of a Child Protection Unit, it is argued that the pure and scientific forms of risk assessment and management found in policy statements are hybridized through police practice, under the influence of factors such as police culture and the 'hunches' of individual officers. Three hybridized models of risk are identified: the forensic risk model, the witness model and the police-rationale-for-intervention risk model. These models help us to understand how the police sustain and justify their working practices as they attempt to detect, investigate and regulate paedophiles in a diversity of settings.