Sex offence

There's A Reliable Therapy For Sex Offenders -- But Nobody Wants Them To Get It

Most of us would probably sympathize with the people carrying torches and pitchforks. In fact, laws in the U.S. and Canada are increasingly designed to exclude sex offenders from society, with residency restrictions, monitoring programs, community notification programs, and civil commitments that effectively keep people locked up forever, even after they have served their term in prison.

The plan Nigh came up with for Charlie Taylor was the opposite of all that. Since then, it’s come to be known as Circles of Support and Accountability, or CoSA. The model is used internationally to reduce the chances that freed sex offenders will fall back into their old crimes. Two decades of research suggests it can be effective — more so, at any rate, than knee-jerk safety measures like notifying the public about sex offenders in their midst, which can actually increase the risk of reoffense.