The criminal justice majors in Shelly Clevenger’s course studying sex offenses are usually prepared for a final project that is out-of-the-ordinary.
“I’ve had a lot of these same students in my other classes, so they know their projects will be a little quirky,” said Clevenger, whose innovative teaching has been honored by the American Society of Criminology. “I wanted something that will help them communicate with their audience.” For the future members of law enforcement, that means connecting not only with those who are vulnerable to sexual offenses, but also those who have committed them.
Clevenger split the class into three groups, and charged them with creating resources for their audiences. One group designed a comic book to help homeless children avoid online predators. Another created a brochure to help parents of children with developmental disabilities work with their children on online safety. The third compiled a pamphlet of employment resources for past sexual offenders.
Online predation is not that common. They should really work on the dynamics in families and institutions and try to understand why abuse is common between aquaintances.
Love the fact that this professor is teaching the other side of law enforcement. To teach about bringing down the rate of recidivism by providing information/education and prevent someone before they commit a crime, is at least a first step. Kudos to Shelly Clevenger! There should be more of them.
Maybe Janice can work on getting her more facts relating to sex offenders and eventually adding a class just to teach young students what life for a sex offender is like and what would help them heal and be free citizens in this country.
Admirable effort, but have to wonder if they decided to actually apply as if they were an RC or talk with the mgmt at the suggested places to apply for employment before putting the paperwork together so they got a realistic view of the employment difficulties faced by RCs. If they did not, then they should to get a great understanding of the difficulties.
Walmart does background checks on people so RC most likely cannot work there, but hopefully some have been able to as the exception. I have heard Mod Pizza (a growing pizza chain nationally) does not hold back from hiring those with records (RCs are unknown).
I hope I don’t sound like an ass, but is that really what people do in college now-a-days? I am specifically referring to sex offender employment opportunities. Any sex offender can go to the employment office and find out there a few possibilities for a job. It seems like the students would have a false sense of satisfaction, but the sex offender is no better off.
Sex offenders are not allowed jobs. Even unrelated to their offense. I have read about firefighters , home depot employees, and salvation army bell ringers being fired for being a sex offenders. If even the salvation army fires sex offenders, who volunteer as bell ringers, what type of serious job prospects actually exist?
My problem with this approach is that it presumes there is a cycle to begin with, while in the overwhelming majority of cases there is none. As empirical evidence shows, the so-called cycle is broken once the offender gets caught. Even, perhaps especially, those cases where the offender has committed previously unreported offenses.
Generally speaking, no measure taken to prevent a recurrence of a rare or non-existent incident ever accomplishes its intent.