Sex Offender Management Policies As Drivers of Substance Use Disparities: A Qualitative Examination

Background and Purpose: Modern sex offender management policies require that individuals convicted of sex offenses abide by stringent sex offender registration and notification (SORN) requirements. As a result of these policies, registrants face immense marginalization that manifests as numerous policy and legal proscriptions, exclusion from social services and programs, and intense stigma, alienation, discrimination, and harassment. Despite compelling indirect evidence, and potential policy and practice implications, no social work research has directly examined how this significant and multifaceted marginalization impacts substance use related harms for registrants. This study uses qualitative semi-structured interviews with registrants and with criminal legal, substance use, and forensic stakeholders in Philadelphia to investigate how multilevel SORN consequences impact health and structure a substance use risk environment for PRR.

Methods: 44 semi-structured interviews with PRR recruited from local sex offender treatment sites and 20 semi-structured stakeholder interviews with Philadelphia based attorneys; substance use and social service providers; specialized probation officers; and local policy and programming officials. Interviews explore experiences navigating SORN restrictions, SORN related barriers to material and psychosocial resources, and implications for registrants’ substance use and mental health.

Results: Participants described how SORN restrictions pose severe material and emotional hardship, restrict access to resources, and strongly impact mental health and wellbeing. Participants explained how these hardships and exclusions often triggered substance use relapses and increased substance use related risks. Participants also discussed how, simultaneously, SORN policies formally restrict registrants from accessing treatment and programming resources, and informally reduce the efficacy of available low-barrier services (that often rely on open communication and non-judgmental support from peers).

Conclusions and Implications: These findings suggest a need for extending general access to substance use and social service programming to registrants, as well as considering the development of specialized services and resources that address substance use among registrants. This study also provides evidence for social service providers, funders, policy advocates, and officials on the need to reform harmful and ineffective SORN policies that structure a harmful substance use risk environment for registrants.