Résumé :
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Recent figures from the Ministry of Justice (March, 2017) show that there are 85,513 offenders in the prison population, 13,246 of whom have been sentenced for sexual offences. This is the highest number in custody since 2002 and it now represents 15 per cent of the prison population. This trend of increasing numbers of sex-offenders in the prison population can be put alongside a spike in historical sex abuse cases, and more punitive sanctions implemented by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 which has resulted in longer average sentences for sex-offenders and more people placed on the (ViSOR) Sex-Offenders Register. ViSORs are confidential and can only be accessed by personnel from the police, and the probation and prison services. Nonetheless, a long campaign by the media (especially the now defunct News of the World) to publish the identities of child sex offenders, where they publicly named and shamed them has created a type of moral panic (as described by Cohen 1972). This coupled with a difficulty, in some cases, of retaining anonymity, often due to information gained from court reports, local newspapers, and social media which has resulted in more families being drawn into a socially constructed ethical and psychological universe, where public distaste is prominent for these types of crimes. [Extrait]
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