Books to Read

Sex Offender Laws

Sex Offender Laws: Failed Policies, New Directions (Hardcover) by Dr. Richard Wright

“This fine book by Richard Wright and his distinguished collaborators provides the evidence that wise policy-makers would want to consider. It covers every major field of research concerning sex offenders and sexual offenses and provides evidence of bad practices and policies .Intellectually honest politicians should read this book.”
—Michael Tonry, LL.B,
Professor of Law and Public Policy
University of Minnesota Law School (From the Foreword)

In response to many high-profile cases of sexual assault, federal and state governments have placed a number of unique criminal sanctions on sex offenders. These include residency restrictions, exclusionary zones, electronic monitoring, and chemical castration. However, the majority of sex offender policies are not based on empirical evidence, nor have they demonstrated any significant reductions in offender recidivism. In fact, some of these policies have unintended consequences, which actually increase the likelihood of sexual offenses.

In this book, Wright critically analyzes existing policies, and assesses the most effective approaches in preventing sex offender recidivism. This provocative and timely book draws from the fields of criminal justice, law, forensic psychology, and social work to examine how current laws and policies are enacted and what to-date is known about their efficacy. In response to the failed policies of sex offender laws, this book presents alternative models and approaches to sex offense laws and policies. Wright also explores critical, cutting-edge topics, such as internet sexual solicitation, the death penalty, and community responses to sex offense.

Key Features:

• An introduction and overview of the history of sex offender laws
• Analyzes the role of the media in sex offense and sex offender policies
• Examines the political “untouchability” of sex offender laws and their adverse effects
• Features interviews with victims of sexual assault, investigating their points of views on what kinds of reforms need to be made to sex offender laws

Thought-provoking and insightful, Sex Offender Laws serves as a vital resource for policy makers, researchers, and students of criminal justice, law, and social work.

About the Author

Richard G. Wright is a nationally known expert on the issue of sexual offender laws. He has been a practitioner, researcher, scholar, public speaker and teacher on issues of sexual offending, federal crime control, racial inequality, and domestic violence for twenty years. After many years of community-organizing, policy advocacy, program development and implementation, he received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2004.

He has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Criminology & Public Policy, and legal journals on federal sex offender laws including the Adam Walsh Act, the 2003 Protect Act and the 1994 enactment of the Jacob Wetterling Act. He has been interviewed and cited by numerous media outlets including USA Today, Newsweek, the Boston Globe and National Public Radio. His intellectual and scholarly agenda includes examining the growth of preventive detention, the balance between civil liberties and the War on Terror, sexual assault and moral agency.

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Sex Offender Lives Here (Hardcover) by Harry Ramble (Author)

It should have been an ordinary divorce battle, with its familiar portions of malice and chicanery. But then things got ugly. In Sex Offender Lives Here, a father attempts to gain custody of his son, only to be caught up in an epic clash of cultures.

Once, Fletcher Geffney had everything: a lovely wife, wealthy and influential in-laws, an estimable literary career. Now he stands to lose it all, including his 10-year-old son Christopher, after his wife makes a series of alarming accusations in the course of a preliminary child custody hearing.

Under normal circumstances, Fletcher might have successfully defended himself against criminal charges he insists are false and unfounded: the statutory rape of a 15-year-old fashion model, possession of child pornography and endangering the welfare of a minor.

But these are uncommon times. The Balloon Man, a sexual predator with a capacity for almost supernatural stealth and savagery, is preying on children. Even as the Balloon Man’s reign of terror unleashes a frenzy of outrage and fear across several states, an opportunistic local politician seizes on Fletcher s newsworthy predicament to campaign for new and frankly unconstitutional enhancements to his state s registry system for convicted sex felons. In response, the controversial leader of an advocacy group called Sex Offenders Solidarity (SOS) seeks to make Fletcher the public face for the legal and social plight of sex offenders.

Soon persecuted felons, some dangerous and some merely abject victims of circumstance, begin showing up at Fletcher s door seeking shelter and safety in numbers. Fletcher s neighbors grow restive, then openly hostile. Activists, ideologues, and vigilantes on both sides of a cultural divide join the fray. With unnerving swiftness, Fletcher finds himself at ground zero in a pitched battle between an agitated, frightened citizenry and a shadowy underground of deviants and criminals.

Out of options and out of time, Fletcher conceives a plan to kidnap his son from his wife and flee the country. Just as he is about to put this plan into action, a tragic event the disappearance of a local 10-year-old girl triggers a final, deadly escalation of violence. Fletcher s day of reckoning with both his angry community and with the family he has wronged arrives at last.

Sex Offender Lives Here is the story of a father’s worst nightmare. It is also the story of a father’s redemptive love for his son and his struggle to come to terms with the mistakes he has made in his life. Harry Ramble’s debut novel is a tale told with passion and keen moral clarity, dark humor and unsparing insight.

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Modern Day Leper

The Modern Day Leper (Paperback)
by Dick Witherow (Author), Jim Leary (Editor)
With all the publicity regarding sexual crimes against children, society feels less threatened when strong laws are in force limiting where sex offenders can live, work and play. They are led to believe that convicted sex offenders are very likely to commit new crimes, and are a threat to the community. This book exposes many of the myths surrounding the preceived threat of allowing sex offenders to live in our communities. It expalins how our criminal justice system has failed to apply justice when dealing with these cases.

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The World Calls Me SEX OFFENDER

The World Calls Me SEX OFFENDER (Paperback)
James Clagen (Author)
What has the world called you in the past? What beliefs do you hold about yourself? Do you view yourself in light of what you did in the past? Is it possible that what you believe could be wrong? This is a true story about a person who committed a sex crime. It is also a story about restoration by the grace of God. This book could very well change your life forever and change how you view other people. It is full of the author’s “closet of skeletons” and reveals how to remove them from your own life. It touches on addictions of all sorts and the way to overcome them. It also talks about how this world deals with people that they don’t understand. “And you shall know the truth,and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32 NKJV)