There was an initiative set up in Canada in 1994 whereby a group of people would join together to help rehabilitate (and to some extent monitor the bahaviour of) convicted sex offenders upon their release.
More recently, there have been projects set up in the UK doing the same thing. There was an article in today's G2[1] which included comments from some of the volunteers, and it made me think about whether I'd be able to contribute to such a project (assuming that the general apathy towards volunteering has been overcome).
There are two main criteria (maybe three) that I think would need to be met:
Firstly, and probably the most important, is whether you think you'd have the people skills (motivation, questioning etc.) to actually be helpful to the 'core member'. It is going to be a lot more demanding than helping plant trees.
Secondly, and perhaps thirdly, would you be able to bring yourself to help such a person? And, if you could, would you care what other people thought? Would you, for example, go into the specifics if you were including it on a CV?
Whilst at university, I was quite havily involved in volunteering projects involving the motivation of 'disadvantaged' people, and while I was never entirely convinced that I was being helpful, the feedback I got from the co-ordinators was rather good (I even won an award
), so with training I'm fairly sure I could do a good job.
I happen to think that rehabilitation is often preferable to punishment, and agree with the campaign's motto of 'no more victims', and so I'd seriously consider becoming involved in a year or two when my own life is a bit more settled (we're ignoring the apathy, remember?)
Most people are liberal enough that I'd be fairly sure they wouldn't care/mind what I was doing, however I'm not convinced that going into details with people for who first impression matters (i.e. the CV) would be a good idea. It would be simple enough to gloss over the details, while still being able to include the pertinent/positive information, and the chance that it would be a tabloid-reader on the other end is fairly high.
There are a couple of links to some sites with more information below.
[1]
http://society.guardian.co.uk/crimea...817574,00.html
[2]
http://www.ccjf.org/what/circles.html
[3] [PDF]
http://www.voma.org/docs/dyck.pdf
[4]
http://www.stjohnsottawa.ca/pages/cosa.html
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