UK: The UK Is Getting Tougher – and Sex Offender Policy Is Showing It

Things are getting very harsh in the UK when it comes to how society deals with people convicted of sexual offenses. Two stories this week should get everyone’s attention.

The BBC is reporting on the UK’s increasingly aggressive approach to managing sex offenders’ location, while The Guardian reports that thousands of male prisoners in England and Wales could soon be offered libido-suppressing medication as part of an effort to reduce reoffending.

Exclusion zones placed on people convicted of sexual offenses parallels what has failed miserably here in the United States. Here, we have watched residency restrictions expand from a few narrowly defined locations into enormous geographic webs that can make it extraordinarily difficult or practically impossible for a person to find lawful housing.

At some point, we have to be honest about what that is. When the government creates so many areas in which a person cannot live or enter that there is effectively nowhere left for them to go, it begins to look less like civil regulation and more like banishment. And banishment is hardly a new concept in English history. For centuries, England used exile as punishment. Beginning in the 18th century, convicted people were literally shipped out of the country to British colonies. Between 1788 and 1868, more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia — a punishment specifically designed to remove people from British society.

We abolished that system because the idea of physically removing people from society as punishment eventually became incompatible with modern concepts of justice and rehabilitation. Now, it seems, the UK is recreating the same principle.

The Guardian reports that approximately 3,750 prisoners — roughly one-quarter of the sex-offender prison population — could be considered for treatment. The proposed medication can include SSRIs and anti-androgens intended to reduce sexual thoughts, arousal and sexual urges. A pilot currently operating in 10 prisons is expected to expand to 20 this fall.

But here’s the part that should concern anyone who believes in proportional punishment, rehabilitation and due process: The line between voluntary treatment and coercion can become very thin when the person making the choice is sitting in prison and the alternative may affect parole or release.

The UK has already been debating mandatory chemical suppression. That proposal appears to have stalled, but the government is now pursuing a voluntary model while facing a massive prison overcrowding problem. The Guardian specifically notes that the government is looking at the medication program as one possible response to both reoffending and overcrowding.

And that’s where we need to pay attention. There is an enormous difference between saying: “Here is a treatment that may help a person who wants it.” and saying: “Take this medication if you want the possibility of getting out of prison.” The first is treatment. The second raises profound questions about whether consent is actually voluntary.

For those of us watching what is happening with sex-offender policy around the world, what’s happening in the UK is a troubling case study. The political pressure to “do something” about sexual offending is enormous. As that pressure increases, policies can move quickly from rehabilitation to increasingly punitive measures. And once a society accepts the premise that people convicted of a particular category of crime can be subjected to extraordinary restrictions, where does it end?

None of this means we shouldn’t take sexual offending seriously. We absolutely should. But taking sexual offending seriously and abandoning proportionality are not the same thing. Punishment should not become an excuse for experimentation, humiliation, or lifelong social exclusion.

The UK is showing us what can happen when political pressure surrounding sex offenses continues to escalate.