International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Managing Unacceptable Risk Managing Unacceptable Risk: Sex Offenders, Community Response, and Social Policy in

Abstract: This article compares the community protection–risk management model for the control of sex offenders with the clinical and justice models that preceded it and with a restor-ative justice alternative based on the principle of community reintegration. The author dis-cusses how this community protection–risk management model reflects the new penology as well as the fusion of panopticism and synopticism. The author also discusses the model’s actual and potential social costs. He concludes with a brief look at circles of support and accountability. This Canadian approach involves setting up support circles of volunteers who enter into a covenant with persons designated as high-risk sex offenders to help them both to integrate into the community and to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend. Following developments that have swept the United States and Canada during the past decade, the development of comprehensive special controls for sex offenders is an emerging international trend (Agence France Presse, 1999; Jenkins, 2001). The number of sex offenders under state control in the United States and Canad