Building stakeholder support for a sex offender public disclosure scheme : learning from the English pilots

A national scheme to allow the public to have access to information about convicted sex offenders living locally has recently been introduced. This roll-out follows an evaluation of pilot schemes that operated in four areas. The campaign for the introduction of such a scheme in the UK has had wide media backing but children's charities had previously been reluctant to offer support. This article explores how the views of the children's charities, and other stakeholders, became more positive due to their experience of the pilot schemes. It identifies the characteristics that need to be present to attract such support.