We all seem to hate sex offenders. But, sex offenders are often quite different. Someone peeping through windows is rather different from a predatory rapist. Some sex offenders seem amenable to treatment and some not. Some pedophiles offend against children they know and some seek out children they do not know. Some offend against boys and some against girls. It's very complex. It seems wrong to just lump them all together. But, we do that to some degree. We tend to want more onerous sanctions imposed on them than other violent offenders even murderers. So, discuss just why this might be. Why lump them all together? Why the harsh sanctions? It's still rather unclear as to why most sex offenders engage in the behavior they do. I was the Superintendent at the Monroe Correctional Complex for a few years. We had the sex offender treatment program there at our Twin Rivers unit. I occasionally sat in on treatment sessions. I often heard an offender say that he had engaged in his sex offending because he had been offended against. Often, however, when pressed, he confessed that it was simply a way to excuse his behavior and he had not really been sexually offended against. It's complex. Go figure. Anyway, discuss all this.