8.6.2 Policing passion: Sexualised media in the nursing care and treatment of the sexual offender (440)

David Mercer, University Lecturer, Department of Nursing, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Abstract:

Background:

High security psychiatric provision in England and Wales provides for the treatment of offenders deemed mentally disordered and dangerous. Dating back to the criminal lunatic asylum of the nineteenth century, the role of staff within these institutions was dominated by debates about therapeutic custody and the tensions incumbent on containment and care. Forensic nursing as a relatively recent, but rapidly expanding, area of professional practice has prompted the need for an appropriate evidence and skills base. Sex offender treatment is one dimension of this role function, where access to sexually explicit, or erotic, media presents a complex challenge in managing treatment environments and therapy (Mercer & McKeown 1997).

Aims:

To explore the accounts of forensic mental health nurses and personality disordered sexual offenders in relation to pornography, sexual desire, and sexual offending.

Methods:

A discourse analytic approach informed the concurrent collection and analysis of data. Semi-structured interviewing with nursing staff (18) and patients (9) were used to co-construct accounts within the context of one high-security psychiatric hospital. Data coding identified theoretical and conceptual themes that represented the discursive repertoires of collective talk.

Results:

Professional and political concerns about the role of pornography in the institutional treatment of the disordered sexual offender (Fallon et al 1999) has constructed pornography as, both, clinical and security issues. The ‘content’ of sexual media, the ‘context’ of sexual offending, and the ‘censorship’ of risk-management, has invested nursing with a policing and surveillance role; where simplistic associations between fantasy and offending conjoined the deviant imagination and the deviant individual.

Discussion:

This presentation will review a diverse body of literature on pornography and harm, reflecting different academic and ideological positions, in relation to the policy and practice of custodial care.

Biography:

The presenter currently works as a lecturer in the Division of Nursing at the University of Liverpool. A mental health nurse, his career spans clinical practice, teaching and research, with a particular interest in the care and treatment of the mentally disordered offender. The presentation is based on the findings of a recently submitted PhD. The greater part of his professional life has been devoted to recognising and developing the role of the forensic nurse as a specialist area of practice. Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in sociology and criminology have informed a critical engagement with the concept of medicalised offending, and healthcare practice at the interface of criminal justice and psychiatry. He is the co-author and co-editor of three books on forensic mental health practice, and has published extensively in, peer reviewed, professional and academic journals. His contribution to the promotion of quality care in secure settings has resulted in invited keynote presentations at international conferences in Australia (2002) and New Zealand (2003, 2004). In Canada (2000) he received an Achievement Award from the International Association of Forensic Nurses in recognition of ‘advancement of the scientific practice of forensic nursing through research and publications’.