Working Toward Desistance: Canadian Public Attitudes and Policy Endorsement for the Treatment, Management, and Prevention of Sexual Offending

Understanding public sentiments toward persons who commit acts of sexual violence and the means to prevent it is essential to the development of successful and workable policies to reduce sexual victimization. We examined Canadian attitudes toward persons who commit sex offenses, support for sexual violence prevention policy (i.e., incapacitation/control [IC] vs. rehabilitative/reintegrative [RR]), and the interrelations among attitudes, demographic variables, and policy endorsement in a representative sample of English-speaking adult Canadians (N = 1,008) who completed an online survey battery. Results demonstrated that the Canadian public had largely negative feelings toward individuals with a history of sex crimes, especially those who target children; beliefs about the population, in general, tended to be more neutral, and respondents anticipated meaningful reductions in sexual violence with treatment. Canadians endorsed both RR-related (e.g., therapy, stable housing, job assistance, bolstering community supports) and IC-related (e.g., residence restrictions, being placed on a registry, prison time) policies. Punitive attitudes were related to endorsement of more IC policies, and fewer RR policies, while rehabilitative attitudes demonstrated the reverse. Further, conservative political orientation and having children were associated with increasingly negative attitudes and IC policy endorsement, while education level was associated with more rehabilitative attitudes and RR policy endorsement. Multipredictor models upheld these findings, demonstrating that public beliefs, emotional feelings, and key demographics uniquely predicted RR versus IC policy endorsement. The findings have implications for future policies and reintegration strategies and may encourage collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and the public.