The article is focused on the study of current trends of social control policy in Western countries aimed at protecting society against sexual violence. The article contains an analysis of political transformations – from «criminal law of freedom» to «criminal law of risks».

A special stress is made on the practices of the European Court of Human Rights concerning application of the Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights for issues of registering of sex offenders («David Adamson v. the UK» (dec.), «Robert William Andrew Ibbotson v. the UK» (dec.), Gardel v. France»).

The most important US judicial practices are also taken into consideration («Smith v. Doe», «Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe»).

The paper contains an analysis of legislation of Western states focused on the issues of registering of sex offenders.

This paper stresses on actualization of social control over sex offenders, which reflects the transition from "punishment" to "security measures", which, in its turn, means the transition from the classic "execution of punishment" to positivist "management in the area of social security".

The paper stresses that further transformation of social control policy in the XXI century is connected with the following moments: 1) revision of the purpose of imprisonment as a punishment; 2) simultaneous efforts to add as many alternative punishments as possible to the punitive social control repertoire (community punishments); 3) changing the nature of alternative punishments (community punishments), and, as a consequence, 4) changing the goals of criminal punishment, which for a long time had the status of "traditional".

In addition, analyzing the above thesis, we must at the same time give it further development due to the fact that "criminal law of risks", in fact, is no longer a criminal law, because the classical tools are not enough to control risks, regulate risks and punish excessive risk.

Therefore, "criminal law of risks" has begun to be widely used even in the arsenal of non-criminal measures, which are presented as "non-punitive civil measures".