Seen and Not Heard: The Service User’s Experience Through the Justice System of Individuals Convicted of Sexual Offenses

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X19851671
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X19851671

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(12) 1299 –1315

© The Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0306624X19851671

journals.sagepub.com/home/ijo

Article

Seen and Not Heard: The

Service User’s Experience

Through the Justice System

of Individuals Convicted of

Sexual Offenses

Kieran F. McCartan1, Danielle A. Harris2,

and David S. Prescott3

Abstract

User experience and client satisfaction is capturing more attention in the field

of social services. The provision of treatment services to individuals convicted of

sexual offenses, in particular, has expanded exponentially over the last 20 years.

This growing population is now interviewed, interrogated, investigated, assessed,

managed, treated, supervised, and surveilled, while their perspective as “service

users” is almost entirely absent from research. To that end, this article introduces

the service user voice within the context of society’s responses to sexual offending.

We conducted thematic analysis on secondary data from interviews with 93

individuals. These include 74 men from the United States and 19 men from the

United Kingdom, all of whom had been convicted for sexual offenses. The original

qualitative data from the two original studies were freshly analysed, inductively and

deductively, using Thematic Analysis so that the themes, as well as resulting codes,

were appropriate and fit for purpose. Specific themes emerged from each of three

clear stages in their service user journey: (a) Interactions with the formal criminal

justice system (police, courts, and custodial corrections), (b) Interactions with

community corrections (probation and parole), and (c) Interactions with treatment

providers (rehabilitation, therapists, and evaluators). We describe the service user

experience at each stage and discuss how policy and practice can resolve areas of

1University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

2Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

3Becket Family of Services, Orford, NH, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kieran F. McCartan, Department of Health and Social Sciences, University of the West of England,

Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1WA, UK.

Email: kieran.mccartan@uwe.ac.uk

851671IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X19851671International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyMcCartan et al.

research-article2019

1300 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 65(12)

disconnection. We suggest several ways to promote and privilege the service user

voice for those convicted of sexual crimes.

Keywords

prevention, service user voice, desistence, treatment, individuals that commit sexual

abuse

Individuals convicted of sexual offenses are often thought of by the public—and

sometimes professionals—as being irredeemable, challenging to work with, and dif-

ficult to treat and reintegrate into the community. Therefore, as they progress through

the system (from arrest through custody, then probation, and onto treatment and com-

munity reintegration) the professionals engaging with them rarely do so in a truly

individualized way. The authors argue that individuals convicted of sexual offenses

who are subject to treatment are service users in the same way that other individuals

who have committed offenses are. They interact with several services (i.e., police,

courts, custody, parole, treatment) and a range of related service providers (i.e., police

officers, lawyers, judges, prison officers, parole staff, therapists, etc.), with each pro-

viding a different function across their journey through the criminal justice system.

Each of these services responds to a different set of policies, needs, and/or require-

ments that affect the individual service user, all hopefully contributing to their success-

ful community management and reintegration. In this article, we consider the service

user to be the person that has committed a sexual offense and has come to the attention

of authorities. The “services” to which they are subject include the disparate profes-

sionals and organisations that they come into contact with throughout their journey

through the criminal justice system.

There is a long history of service user engagement in the realms of health care

(McLaughlin, 2009; NHS England, 2015; Ocloo & Matthews, 2016; Tierney et al.,

2016), mental health services (Grundy et al., 2016; Mockford et al., 2016), social work

(Beresford, Croft, & Adshead, 2008; Glasby & Beresford, 2006; Social Care Institute

for Excellence, 2017; Warren, 2007), education (Senior, Moores, & Burgress, 2017),

and psychotherapy (Wooldridge, 2010). However, the concept of the service user

rarely manifests in the same way within the criminal justice system. In fact, it is virtu-

ally absent from the field that tasks itself with punishing, managing, treating, monitor-

ing, and reintegrating individuals convicted of sexual offenses.

In the correctional environment, the clearest example of the service user voice is that

of the prisoner (Bernasco, 2010; Clinks, 2011; User Voice, 2017). Most prisoners—

especially in the United Kingdom (Clinks, 2011)—can consult with and offer feed-

back on services that affect them directly. However, even this engagement is often

restricted to large, conventional prison programs and relatively normative inmates,

and excludes those considered to be challenging (i.e., with learning disabilities or

mental health concerns) or difficult (i.e., perpetrators of sexual abuse or prisoners in

protective custody). Although some correctional facilities have provided a voice to