Desistance from Sex Offending: Alternatives to Throwing Away the Keys

This book offers a fresh perspective on treating a population that is often demonized by policymakers, the public, and even clinicians. Leading experts D. Richard Laws and Tony Ward argue that most sex offenders are "people like us," with the potential to lead meaningful, law-abiding lives—if given a chance and appropriate support. They present an empirically and theoretically grounded rehabilitation approach, the Good Lives Model, which can be integrated with the assessment and intervention approaches that clinicians already use.

The book comprehensively examines what is known about factors promoting desistance from crime. Laws and Ward explain that desistance is not an isolated event, but a process—replete with lapses, relapses, and recoveries—by which an individual turns away from criminality and becomes reintegrated into the community. They critique existing models of dealing with offenders that primarily focus on risk management and surveillance. Instead, they show how encouraging naturally occurring desistance processes and directly addressing barriers to community reentry can make treatment more effective and long lasting. The Good Lives Model is compatible with widely used cognitive and behavioral treatment techniques, but it provides a broader framework for helping individuals envision and work toward the kind of life they want. It also emphasizes the importance of furnishing social, vocational, and family supports to increase offenders' well-being and reduce recidivism. Concise case examples illustrate how the Good Lives Model can enable practitioners to incorporate desistance theory into real-world clinical practice with this population.

Describing a powerful new way of thinking about and responding to offenders, this book is richly informative reading for clinical and forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers; sex offender treatment specialists; and researchers in psychology and law, as well as graduate students in these fields.

D. Richard Laws, PhD, is Codirector of the Pacific Psychological Assessment Corporation (PPAC) and Director of Pacific Design Research, which serves as a development arm of PPAC. Dr. Laws holds appointments at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). His research interests center primarily on development of assessment procedures for offenders. He is the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, and scholarly essays, and coeditor/coauthor of a number of books and manuals.
Tony Ward, PhD, is Head of School and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research interests include cognition in offenders, rehabilitation and reintegration processes, and ethical issues in forensic psychology. He has published extensively in these areas and has over 280 academic publications.