Theories of Sexual Offending

By Tony Ward, Devon Polaschek and Anthony R. Beech

This comprehensive text provides an up-to-date review and critique of current theorising about sexual offending. It presents the key ideas underpinning each theory in a clear and accessible manner. Theories are rigorously tested and evaluated, and their merits are examined from both a research and a clinical point of view.

Importantly, the emphasis is on providing clear links between theory and practice, and the clinical implications of the different theories and perspectives are explicitly discussed. In addition, a number of new ideas about the aetiology of sexual offending are presented.

Theories of Sexual Offending is one of the few books to draw all of the disparate strands of theorising together, and is the only one to clearly link theory to practice. It will be a valuable resource for any professional working with sexual offenders, such as clinical and forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, probation officers and social workers. It will also be of interest to students of forensic and clinical psychology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Feb 22, 2006
• ISBN: 9780470032886

Tony Ward

Tony Ward, PhD, DipClinPsyc, is currently professor in clinical psychology and director of clinical training at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught clinical and forensic psychology at the universities of Melbourne, Canterbury, and Deakin and is a professorial fellow at the Universities of Birmingham, Kent, Melbourne, and Portsmouth. He has coauthored more than 370 academic publications, and his major research interests include desistance and reintegration processes in offenders, conceptualizations of risk and its management, cognition and evolutionary approaches to crime, and ethical issues in forensic and correctional psychology. He was given the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) 2003 significant achievement award for his research into offence pathways. Professor Ward is the developer of the Good Lives Model and has published numerous books, book chapters, and academic articles on this model since 2002. His recent book, Desistance from sex offending: Alternatives to throwing away the keys (2011, Guilford Press- coauthored with Richard Laws), presents an integration of the GLM with desistance theory and research. He is currently working on a book length project on evolution, agency, and sexual offending.

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