Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-228) and index.

This book surveys the history, current status, and critical issues regarding the various mechanisms designed to control sex offenders. It shows that the social problem of sex offending is not apparently resolvable by any of the means currently employed. A large array of procedures are used in the attempt to control the difficult population of sex offenders, including: imprisonment, institutional and community treatment, community monitoring by probation and parole, electronic monitoring, registration as a sex offender, community notification of an offender status, strict limits on behavioral movement in the community, and residence restrictions. However, these constraints on behavior are almost completely the result of public outrage regarding sensational sex crimes, overreaction of media coverage that produce inaccurate statements of potential community risk, and the efforts of the legal profession and politicians to quell this anger and foreboding by enacting legislation that supposedly confronts the risk. This book demonstrates that we have constructed a massive edifice of community control that is socially and politically driven and which has largely failed to contain sex crime. --Back cover

"The purpose of this book is not to argue for complete overthrow of the existing regularoty system. It is rather to show the strength and weaknessses of that system, to inform the relevant publics of the futility of many of these efforts, and to prepare them to request the repeal of the regulatory system where possible." --Introduction (pages 2-3).

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