Phew! Overuse of obscure and technical terms Andy. You’re in danger of being reported and convicted by the ‘Plain English society’.
The point I believe you’re trying to make is that we are able to measure and compare the statistics used by other countries using different
types of analysis. That by the way, takes me back to my ‘Durkheim’ days of, “Consider social facts as things”. Discredited, because it
counted rather than explained.
The problem with registers is that they too count. The problem with counting is it tells you how much you have, but not how much is missing
or just as importantly, it only gives you a comparison if other people too are counting, so let’s simplify it. By the way, research needn’t be
boring or nerdy it can be interesting as well, but an overuse of terminology can make you lose an audience and can also bog you down in
complexities.
You have a theory that offenders themselves produce low offending rates and that restrictions aren’t needed? Forget the analysis for a
moment and let’s concentrate on how you’d go about proving this. You would have to find a country in the western world that has no
registers or restrictions whatsoever and also with an extremely low or a near zero re-offending rate. Anything more than this would
reinforce the need for registers. In other words, you’d have to go below the reconviction results of the UK to suggest that registers aren’t
needed. You would then need some kind of evidence to suggest why it is that people on registers have such a low re-offending rate and so
why the registers aren’t needed. Is it because the registers are so strict that people go else where to commit offences? Is there some kind
of ‘natural law’ that makes this group less likely to re-offend? In other words, you now have to show that pre registration re-conviction
rates were lower than they are now or roughly increasing/decreasing at the same level and so registration itself has no impact or bearing on
reducing re-offending.
You list a range of countries that do have registers or restrictions, but comparing these is only comparing one register with another, or types
of restrictions against others. We would already know the outcome, wouldn’t we? The more restrictions you place on someone the less
likely they are to get the chance to do anything, until you get to the point of having to stand in front of a camera 24 hours a day and then
your re-offending would be zero.
Research methodology is about measurement and the various instruments used. To measure something though you need to have a clear
idea of what it is you are measuring and to what purpose. Your objective doesn’t seem to be clear on this – is it simply the different
countries registers you’re measuring against one another and how would this show that registers have no effect? To truly measure the
effects of registers, or indeed their non effects, you would have to discontinue them for perhaps a year and then you could statistically
measure the post rates of re-offending. Plainly, that isn’t going to happen, but I can’t see any other way of measuring them, or perhaps
better to say apart from an exercise in statistics, what ‘body of knowledge’ would it produce?
Another problem I can immediately see with the ‘registers’ is this. You have the whole weight of public opinion against any change. Some
character on a recent blog said, ‘the only people who want to get off these registers are the sex offenders themselves’. This sort of makes
logical sense in that if you weren’t on them you would have no need to try to get off them; a bit like saying that 100% of people on a
smoking cessation course want to get off the smoking habit. Now, not having found a common cause to offend, the offending based on
unexplained behavior and the registers intended purpose being to monitor and provide compulsory behavioural courses; the public are
asking why it is that you might want to get off them. You would say that they don’t work and it’s this that you need to explain and to do that
you have to completely disprove the idea of registers. Even if your conclusion says that the register works for some, you’ve lost. It’s the
‘some’ that they will say it’s intended for and if you can’t then define who the ‘some’ are to exclude the others, again you wont be able to
say a register is not needed.
Medicine: There are a set of variables to be measured and this occurs in the pre clinical trials. Do they have side effects? Long term effects?
Does the medicine actually work? They are scientifically measured. Depression is physcological in its origins rather than knee pain which is
physical, so the measurements are different, but yes, depression can be measured and it’s why we have severe, chronic etc. It’s just a
different type of measurement based on severity.
Per aspera ad astra!
Post Edited (IanC) : 08/08/2011 15:02:01 (GMT+1)