Conflicting crime-control strategies? Police supervision and its implications for the therapeutic treatment of individuals convicted of child sexual offences in Denmark

Contemporary Danish criminal justice responses to individuals convicted of sexual offences against children (ICSOCs) are shaped by distinct crime-control strategies in which rehabilitation-oriented interventions intersect with increasingly intrusive control measures. Drawing on four focus group interviews with 13 treatment providers across Denmark’s four highly specialised psychiatric clinics for the treatment of ICSOCs, this article examines Denmark’s recently introduced police supervision scheme and its implications for the therapeutic treatment of ICSOCs. The findings indicate that police supervision generates collateral effects that may interfere with core therapeutic conditions: it imposes psychological burdens that diminish ICSOCs’ capacity to engage meaningfully in treatment, disrupts therapeutic processes within and beyond clinical settings, and weakens the psychosocial stabilisation associated with treatment progress and successful outcomes. More broadly, these findings suggest that intrusive crime-control measures risk reshaping the structural conditions within which the rehabilitative ambitions of the Nordic penal welfare model are expected to operate.