Treatment of paedophiles in the United States compared to Canada

   Currently in the United States of America there are 400,000 registered sex offenders and 800,000 to 100,000 of these offenders are missing and have not been registered. The problem of sexual abuse has arose with the Boy Scouts of America dating back to when the club was first established. They began keeping track of people they suspected to be child molesters in files called the perversion files. This was done to prevent any sexual offenders from entering the Scouts of America. Courts ordered the release of the files from 1965 to 1985 and could bring upon new cases of sexual offences. When the files were reviewed, the files from 1971 to 1991 showed repeated occurrences of scout leaders failing to report a sexual offence even with a confession.

   Before 1994, only five states in the United States of America required sexual offenders to register with local law enforcement. The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Agaisnt Children and Sexually Violent Offenders Act was created and made registries nessisary for all 50 states. In 1996, seven year old Megan Kanka was killed by a released sex offender that lived on her street. A new law; Megan's Law, was introduced that requires all states to conduct community notification programs. However, although the justice system tries to prevent sexual offenders from not registering, many do not follow through with registering. Loopholes through state programs allow paedophiles to 'shop' for states that have less strict register laws and sexual offenders can live in somewhat anonimity. 

   In a single year, out of 4,300 inmates that were arrested for a sexual offence against a child 3.3% of them were rearrested within three years of their release for a sex crime against a child. The average sentence for these 4,300 offenders in the USA is approximatly seven years, with only three of them being served. Since many sexual offenders have prior sexual related offences and the risk of reoffending is typically high, many judges impose special sentencing for paedophiles. The sentencing is usually inprisonment followed by psychiatric treatment and/or counseling, some times a judge may also order a treatment program. A servey done by the State Correctional Facilities found that 13% of sexually offending inmates are ordered by the court to attend a treatment program. Some states mandate that sexual offenders wear ankle tracking devices as an order of the court upon release.

   American treatment programs are more private and are client funded organizations. Polygraph testing is regularly used in treatment programs, these American treatment programs are targeted at offence responsibility. The level of disclosure of the offence is usually high, most treament programs require full disclosure of the offence. U.S treatment programs are quite long and can be as long as, but not limited to eighteen months.

Canada VS. The United States of America:

- In the United states, it is optional to have treatment programs as a court order for sexual offenders. In Canadian law, sexual offenders are automatically required to attend treatment programs as a parole    condition.
- Canadian treatment programs can include medications
- Canadain treatment programs are paid for by the government, American treatment programs are client funded.
- treatment programs for sexual offenders in the United states are three times longer than Canadian treatment programs.