CRIM 316 Textbook Content [Test 3]

Ch. 16 Criminal Investigation of Sexual Offences

• Despite increased focus on criminal investigations of sexual offences, numbers have been stable over past 4 decades

• Gaps in knowledge and police response - feeling of dissatisfaction towards police, miscommunication and misunderstanding about work in this area, misguided responses and practices by police

Investigative Interviewing

• Establishing if crime has occurred, proving guilt: witness/victim statements, physical evidence, confession

• No scientific guidance for police interviews

1. Interviewing victims and witnesses

• Many cases involve victim and offender known to each other - to determine whether victim consented

• Stranger assault - identification of offender is important to investigation

• Attempt to identify and understand situational factors leading up to crime

• Past interviewing practices characterized by police interviewers dominating the social interaction with victim/witness asking direct, close-ended Qs

• Victims unlikely to provide unsolicited info, withholding, giving abbreviated As

• Cognitive Interview Technique (CI): best-known interview method in policing

  • 3 basic psychological processes - memory & cognition, social dynamics, communication

  • Memory-enhancing techniques + improving social dynamics (establishing rapport) = communication environment to allow detailed account

  • 4 memory retrieval rules:

  • a) context reinstatement: mentally reconstruct contexts of event

  • b) in-depth reporting: report everything even if partial/incomplete

  • c) variety of perspectives: narrate from own and potential witness

  • d) temporal orders: from start, end, backwards in time

  • Interviewer refrain from interrupting and let victim control process

• CI improves quantity, quality, accuracy of details (25-50%) compared to other methods

1. Interviewing suspects - “interrogations”

• Obtain info from suspect to authenticate involvement in crime and confession

• If no physical evidence, confession needed to lay charges in corroborating incriminating facts and findings from crime scene

• 8-33% of cases, suspect’s guilt would have never been proven without confession

• Confessions have greater impact on jury decisions than witness statements or hard evidence

• Sexual cases dependent on suspect interviews than crime investigations - only evidence is from suspect

• Offender’s decision to confess influenced by seriousness of crime committed

• Sex crime perpetrators less likely to confess crimes during interrogations

  • Unless interrogator develops a positive, empathic, nonjudgmental, respectful relationship

• Likely to deny crime if perceive external pressure from interviewers (i.e. condemnations, humiliation)

• St-Yves (2002): Confessions likely among suspects: white, single, higher IQ, feelings of guilt, dependent personality, sexually but nonviolently victimized a young male victim

• Beauregard et al., (2010): individual, criminological, situational factors determine a suspect’s willingness to confess

  • Factors related to perpetrators: younger, introverted, prior convictions for sex crimes; victims: male, unknown to offender; case: time of day of crime

  • Criminal history of mainly sex offences, younger, committed crime during the day

  • Versatile less likely to confess

  • Target unknown victim not from criminogenic background likely to confess

  • Confession decision-making to clarify motivational factors to confess

Suspect Identification and Prioritization Methods

1. Behavioural crime linkage analysis

• Determine whether multiple crimes committed by same offender

• Forensic evidence preferred method, but often insufficient evidence available for analysis

• Ritual or fantasy-based behaviours, behavioural signatures (MO fluctuates) are stable and reflect psychological needs of offender - rare empirical tests

• But serial killers do not consistently exhibit same ritualistic behaviours or signatures that could link crimes

• Computerized databases that contain info about unsolved crimes (ViCLAS by RCMP in 1990s)

  • Developed primarily for identifying serial criminals operating across jurisdictional boundaries

• 2 assumptions subject to empirical scrutiny: behavioural stability & behavioural distinctiveness

• Possible to use behavioural evidence to link sexual crimes

• Spatial information collected from crime scenes more useful (inter-crime distances) than MO behaviours (similarity in victim selection)

• Crime scene behaviours are situationally driven

• Person-oriented offences (sex): location and times selected not random but controlled and based on info and internal cost-benefit calculation

• Whatever is influencing timing of offence and location also influences timing and location of subsequent offences

• Recurrent sites can indicate offender’s progression and inform police of their “standing” and focus attention on suspects with more/less sexual criminal background

• Behavioural + linkage + geographic profiling info = look at specific sites likely to be used by offenders among identified areas for suspect prioritization

• Studies focused disproportionately on property crimes, only until early 2000s that sexual offences were being examined

  • Learned much about linking process by studying property offences, unclear these findings generalize to sexual offenders

1. Criminal profiling

• Psychologically-based investigative technique for sex offences

• Practice of predicting an unknown offender’s personality, behavioural, demographic characteristics from an analysis of crime scene evidence

• Often used to prioritize suspects

• Assumptions: behavioural stability, homology (if 2 individuals commit similar crimes, they should have similar bg characteristics)

• Individuals who broke into victim’s house 5x more likely to have previous conviction for burglary than those who did not enter by force

• Offenders with extreme violence 3.5x more likely to have previous conviction for violent offence

• Offenders who destoryed semen at scene 4x more likely to have previous conviction for sexual offence

• Thematic approach: determine if thematic structure exists in crime scenes and bgs of offenders and see if relationships are significant; treats offending decision-making process as dynamic and occurring across specific phases of an offence

  • Offenders with a “hunter search strategy” (actively seeking out victims within short distance from home) are telio-specific (target adult females with specific physical features) use “home intruder approach” and employ assault stategy based on violence and control - associated with sexually deviant bg, socially isolated, fantasies, voyeurism, poor self-image

Challenges in Sexual Assult and Abuse Cases

1. Interviewing issues

2. Trauma and memory

• Review of exoneration cases show mistaken identification due to trauma/stress experienced by victim/witness leading cause in wrongful convictions - 70% of overturned convictions to date

• Unlikely that the narrative given by victim is entirely true/based solely on facts

• Brain can produce inaccurate memories that may not have occurred

• Trauma impacts memory and trauma-related disruption to memory may contribute to attrition

  • I.e. victims with incoherent account for event during interview less likely to see case move forward

1. False allegations

• Studies may be conducted when disbelief and negative attitudes about sex assault victims were more prevalent among LE agencies

• 3 primary motivations: cover up activity/provide alibi, anger/revenge who rejected them or did them wrong, obtaining sympathy from others and seeking attention

• Leading questions can produce false allegations of sexual abuse

• Factors related to case and description offender and their MO rather than victim profile better to distinguish true from false allegations

• True allegations more likely to include descriptions of theft, pseudo-intimate behaviours, precautionary measures to avoid detection

1. False confessions

• Voluntary: unrelated to police interrogation (confess to crime they did not commit)

• Coerced-compliant: complies with police demands, confessor does not fully accept that they were responsible

• Coerced-internalized: internalizes police suggestions that they have committed a crime

• Leading causes of wrongful convictions

  • Police pressure and interviewing techniques, desire to protect someone else, need to avoid incarceration

  • Isolation, lack of sleep, deprivation of needs - situational factors

  • Interrogator bias - manipulate suspect into believing in guilt (downplaying seriousness of crime to lull into false sense of security)

1. General Investigative issues

2. Cognitive biases

• Confirmation bias: investigators search for evidence that confirms their theories, ignoring contradicting evidence

• Verbal probabilistic expressions can be ambiguous and affect interpretation of a claim: dangerous offender associated with heightened sense of how likely the claim was to be true

• Framing effect: same probabilistic expression was interpreted as denoting a lower level of uncertainty when referring to presence of characteristic in offender rather than absence

• Errors relying on criminal profiles

1. Probability errors

• When investigators try to identify patterns from very small samples of crimes/offenders

• When investigators do not account for the inevitability of finding coincidental relationships in datasets (pure chance)

• When investigators display general lack of understanding about role that base rates play in prediction tasks

1. Organizational traps

• “Bureaucratic inertia” prevents agile organizational responses to changing circumstances

• “Organizational momentum” can lead to serious tunnel vision

• Personal and organizational egos also get in the way, preventing investigators from admitting mistakes, adjusting to new info, seeking alternative explanations to known facts

• Group think - reluctance to think critically when part of a group/challenge dominant thinking

1. Issues with the forensic process

• Tool marks, impression evidence, fibers, hair samples, bodily fluids

• Reputation of “objective” science, subjectivity exists and can be misleading

• Problems with standardizing, reliability, accuracy, error, potential for contextual bias

• Interpretation of DNA and fingerprint evidence - contextual info can cause forensic scientists to give different judgements than they had previously given in a positive identification of suspects

Key Points

• Only victim can provide info that will help accurately identify offender, development of good rapport with victim and efficient interviewing techniques needed - CI best practice

• Sex crime perpetrators less likely than other offenders to confess due to objective severity of their offences

• Identifying and prioritizing suspects - forensic sciences, psychological techniques (i.e. behavioural crime linkage analysis, criminal profiling)

• Need to establish whether assumptions underlying behavioural crime linkage analysis and criminal profiling are valid and test operational utility in naturalistic settings

• Accurate behavioural linkage analysis possible with sex offences, difficult to demonstrate reliable relationships between crime scene behaviours and bg characteristics in context of criminal profiling research

• Offending beahviour is dynamic process, statistical techniques can uncover potentially meaningful relationships

• 2-10% of sex assaults reported to police are false

• Cognitive biases, errors in interpretation of probabilistic info, organizational traps (group think)

• Forensic sciences not immune to problems, cognitive biases when criminal profiling used similar to forensic techniques with fingerprint matching

Ch. 5 Desistance and the Rise of Rehabilitation

Desistance: process of declining, de-escalating, stopping offending

• Both stopping AND refraining from participation

• Conceptualized as a process inclusive of lapses, relapses and recovery

• Decrease in frequency, intensity, and seriousness of sexual criminal behaviour

• Sex crime perpetrators share more similarities than differences with non-sex offenders

  • I.e. versatility, substance abuse, age out of crime naturally, follow age-crime curve, problematic childhoods, antisocial behaviour in adolescence, educational difficulties, opportunistic, low self-control

• Focus on risk obscures need to look beyond issues to variables that may promote desistance process

• Labelling someone by the single worst thing they have ever done - inconsistent with a true rehabilitative framework

Society’s Response to Sexual Crime

• Individuals managed in a way that does not allow them to NOT be a “sex offender”

• Profiles of “sexually dangerous person”/”sexual predators” raised above any other offence due to trends in passage of increasingly restrictive pieces of memorial legislation

  • I.e. Megan’s Law, Adam Walsh Act (serious sexual offences against strangers)

• Industry connecting psyc, sexology, social work, LE - polygraph, PPG, actuarial risk assessment → prevention of relapse, rehab, etc. assumes recidivism, specialization, and that rehab is necessary and effective

• Focus on recidivism and risk → legislatures passed laws aimed at registering, managing, restricting the employment, residence, movement of convicted sex offenders

  • Lasting perception that sex offenders are destined to reoffend and always at risk

The Rise of Rehabilitation

• Social phenomena slowed possibility of rehabilitation and reintegration: moral panic regarding prevalence, medicalization of unconventional sexual behaviour (classifying as mentally ill and subject to treatment)

• 19th-20th century psychiatrists: categorized paraphilias to develop a descriptive system

  • If sexual deviation is a mental illness there has to be a way to restore acceptable social behaviour, if not, lock them up so they can’t do harm

• Progressive progammes did not change institutionalization, still exist in the form of parole, probation, indeterminate sentences, juvenile courts, outpatient mental health clinics (focus on individual case rather than treating social deviants as criminals)

• Krafft-Ebing - sexual deviance believed to be mental deficiency

  • Specific programs emerged (dynamic psycho-therapy groups, music therapy, etc.) not succcessful

• New treatment in 1960s: behaviour therapy, precursor for CBT

• Default etiological assumption: sexual offending is a due to faulty social learning and individuals commit sexual offences bc they have skill deficits that make it hard to seek reinforcement in socially acceptable ways

Primary Mechanisms Underpinning Sexual Offending: Thought to be Social and Psychological

• Treatment based on analysis of offending patterns and takes a cognitive-behavioural approach

• Goal: teach sex offenders the skills to change how they feel, think, act, avoid high-risk situations

• Discrete treatment modules devoted to problem areas: cognitive distortions, deviant sexual interests, social skill deficits, impaired problem solving, impulsivity, lifestyle imbalance, post-offence adjustment

• Effectiveness not encouraging

Impact of Current Public Policy/Obstacles to Rehabilitation

Risk assessment

• Labelling seen as risky for rest of their lives

• Result of initial assessment made during first contact with CJS (e.g. Static-99)

• Without evaluating dynamic or criminogenic needs - risk label follows individual forever

Sex offender registration:

• SORNA: statute that divides registrants into 3 tiers according to nature of offences

• Depending on tier, registrants required to update LE on whereabouts every 3, 6, 12 months and required to register for at least 15, 25, or life

• Includes national sex offender registry - negative effects

• I.e. low risk sex offender in 20s faces 15 yr registration when applying for job, get married, buy property, etc.

Community Notification

• Public/community notified either passively (info on Internet) or actively about proximity and presence of sex offender (notices, newspapers, delivered to homes)

Residence restrictions

• Greatest threat to an individual’s successful release from custody and reintegration

• Laws want to ensure sex offenders do not reside within a certain distance (500-2000 feet) of places where children are likely to congregate

• No evidence of effectiveness in reducing sexual crimes against children

• More harm than good

What does this mean for…

Desistance

• Psychological treatment and rehab designed to facilitate behaviour change

• Criminological research finds natural process of desistance occurs without any intervention or treatment

In treatment

• Interview with men convicted of sexual offences and living in community

• Almost half of sample recidivated but have not offended since most recent release

Policy Implications

Farrall: extra-therapeutic factors have greater impact on curbing offending than the work of any professional

Gottfredson & Hirschi: practitioners have a tendency to confuse natural desistance with program effectiveness, wasting considerable resources on unnecessary incapacitation and treatment

Paradigm shift

• Variables identified to assist in desistance (employment, relationships, self-actualization) are broken by process of CJS

• Employment is one correlate where parole, probation, treatment providers can do something

• Emphasize career counselling, building interview skills, resume workshops, working with recruitment agencies to assets them in pursuing appropriate, fulfilling employment for advancement

• Draw attention to creation of support networks, reunification of family, development of personal relationships

Reduction of custodial sentence lengths

• Lengthy prison sentence affects social, professional, romantic relationships and reinforces the development of a criminal identity through labelling

• Contact with CJS can increase chances of subsequent charge

• Incarceration for excessive periods confounds all significant obstacles faced upon re-entry

Introduction of an expiry date for criminal convictions

• Amirault & Lussier (2011): past behaviour might be a useful predictor of future behaviour but loses predictive potency with time

• I.e. someone with a 2-year old charge is at a greater risk of recidivism than a person with the same charge but from 10 years ago

• Prior chargers in early adulthood were no longer predictive of future fending in older sex offenders

• Recalculating risk as individuals age to recognize desistance process

Key points

• Few sexual offences are committed by deviant, specialist, persistent, chronic, fixated, or frequent offenders

• Few convicted are destined to repeat, persist, or escalate behaviour, most will eventually stop

• Field consumed with risk, relapse and recidivism, need to invert paradigm to concentrate on rehabilitation, recovery, redemption

• Significant commitment of expensive resources to the narrowest of circumstances

Ch. 4 Criminal Justice Policies

• Monitoring - cost to state, added work for CJS, reduction of home values in neighborhoods with registrants

• Policies created false sense of security - most registrants struggle to obtain/maintain employment due to status and resort to gov for basic needs

• But when registrants are restricted, their potential for recidivism increases - goes against protective legislation

Theoretical Framework

• Labelling theory: those who become labeled as deviant by society will become shunned and deprived of many of the resources and opportunities that society offers

  • Likelihood of repeating deviant acts increases as they have embraced their status

• Modified labelling theory: individuals plus internal constraints on themselves, which further reduce opportunities for reintegration

  • I.e. less likely to apply for housing and employment, connect with prosocial support systems as they fear retaliation and rejection

• Registrants realize the stigmatization from society and will develop/embrace belief that most people will discriminate against them

  • Relegated to socially disorganized neighbourhoods - unable to achieve middle-class status

Not a new concept: the history of registries

• Gypsies passbook, US registries and residence restriction laws, Gestapo, Reich Criminal Police

• Goal: identify individuals quickly and discourage their reentry into certain facets of society

• Historical precedent give gov surveillance and authoritative power

History of sex offender registration and notification laws

• Primary purpose of SORN: LE to easily identify and monitor individuals convicted of a sexual offence

• Horrific cases drew national attention to sexual victimization of children, identities and types of offenders were and continue to made publicly available online through registries

• Lack of interest in registry among most community members - level of interest based on education, race, sex, believing that they lived in a “safe” neighbourhood

1. Jacob Wetterling Act

• Wetterling’s mother reached out to policymakers - protect children from sexual predators

• Efforts created first sex offender registry - required LE agencies to know the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders

• SMART guidelines

1. Megan’s Law

• Mother advocated that the newly passed Wetterling Act insufficient to protect communities from these offenders

• Mandatory for sex offenders’ whereabouts to be known to public

• All 50 states have passed this law

1. Pam Lychner Sex Offender Tracking and Identification Act

• Formed group “Justice for All” advocated for longer sentences fro those who commit violent and sexual offences

1. Jacob Wetterling Improvement Act

• Previous acts lacked specificity in registration process for states and offenders with regard to relocation, work, school if different than offender’s resident state

• Allowed states to register those who might not have met Wetterling’s definition of sexual offences

• Victims and LE agencies want voice in proceedings of when offender is being determined a sexually violent offender

• Appropriations Act - amendments to prior sex offender laws

1. Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act

• Another amendment to Wetterling Act

• Required registrants regardless of status as student/employee to notify campus police/LE agency that has jurisdiction over the institution

• Universities provide info to community about whereabouts of offender on campus

1. Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act

• Lobbied for more intensive monitoring systems of sex offenders

• Most comprehensive legislation that mandates supervision schemes

• Goal to create universal sex offender registration system and eliminate variations in monitoring registration from one state to the next

SORN

• IHE - many schools did not comply, unaware of registry, etc

I.e. Kentucky sex offenders not allowed on school grounds without written permission from school’s principal or district superintendent

• Relationship between registrant and their children - children punished, diminished parent-child social bonds (parent/teacher conferences, sports, plays, ceremonies)

Efficacy and collateral consequences of SORN

• SORN born out of public and policymaker’s ideology with anecdotal beliefs that sex offenders have a higher propensity to recidivate than other criminals

• Registry found not to influence types of sexual offences - child molestation still predominant

• Propensity for recidivism correlated more with demographics, prior treatment, mental health, subtance abuse, criminal history than SORN

• Registrants not likely to reofend based on whether SORN is being used to monitor them

• Researching effects of SORN = double-edged sword (important to protect public but at what cost)

• Scholarship established that SORN is an ineffective tool to regulate sex offeenders

• Family members of registrants stigmatized

• Minorities subjected to negative outcomes, more likely to reside in disorganized neighbourhoods compared to white registrants

International SORN

• Other counties have registries but only available to LE agencies

• US enacts laws through a “populist positivism” perspective - lawmakers pushed to promote punitive punishment for law breakers

  • I.e. War on Drugs - mass incarceration epidemic

• Definition of sexual assault varies around the world

• US less about due process, more about controlling crime - policies on drugs, domestic violence, sex offences geared towards preventing crime or recidivism rather than upholding rights of offender or long-term effects on offenders and clothes

• Canada’s NSOR controlled by RCMP - other LE agencies must be granted permission to access registry

  • Requests made due to recent reported sexual assault in jurisdiction that is investigating

  • Not everyone convicted of sexual offence has to register, convicted must prove that they should not be included on Canada’s national registry

Residence restriction laws

• No empirical evidence to support goal of controller offenders and protecting public

• Relegated to socially disorganized neighbourhoods, inhibiting reentry efforts

• Many have violated registration requirements due to having no other place to go, either that or homelessness

• But most emergency homeless shelters forbids sex offenders

• SORN label + residence restrictions, other policies - most damaging to reintegration

Summary

• Laws reduce opportunities for re-entry

• Public and policymakers continue to root out sexually deviant behaviour against women and children

• Registries and other laws to manage sex offenders not effective in prevention

• False sense of security - public feel protected but sex offenders rarely recidivate

• Sexual assault from strangers rarer than known perpetrators

• US set precedent - how sex offenders should be managed - other countries following

Ch. 6 Treatment and Management of Youths who have Perpetrated Sexual Harm

• 300 assumptions by National Adolescent Perpetrator Network - only 3 had impact on treatment, management, research:

• 1. Juvenile sex offenders are a unique class of juvenile delinquents

• 2. They require specialized, intensive, offense specific intervention for desistance

• 3. Treatment of sexually abusive youth requires nontraditional techniques and may run counter to previous professional training

• Influenced treatment programs, registration, notification, residence restrictions, civil commitment to youth

Juvenile Sex Offender Treatment

• Majority of sexually abusive acts against children are committed by other children/juveniles

Task force findings: adolescents who have sexually offended (ASOs) considered a specialized population that requires sex offence specific interventions

• Assumed to be a dangerous group, likely to continue behaviour as adults

• Recommended treatment adapted from adult treatment, based on “clinical experience”

Problems with early ASO treatment

• (1) ASOs commit fewer nonsexual, delinquent acts, have fewer antisocial friends, and are less antisocial than other delinquent adolescents

  • Offend at lower rate than nonsexual delinquents

  • Recidivism rate 5%

• (2) Recommending standard adult sex offender treatment strategies to adolescents

  • “Trickle down phenomena”

  • Recommended that treatment focus on helping adolescents accept full responsibility for their behaviours, increase mastery over behaviour and emotions, etc.

  • But assumes that causes of sex offending behaviour is similar to adults - neglect dynamic pattern of adolescent development

• I.e. treating deviant sexual arousal - cognitive techniques adapted for adolescents

• Relapse prevention strategies, how to recognize triggering environments and identifying coping skills

• Covert sensitization (pairing negative stimuli to deviant fantasies)

• Imaginal desensitization (relaxation to avoid acting on deviant fantasies)

A Heterogeneous Population

• Hard to apply standard adult sex offender treatment to adolescents

• Studies inconsistent - some found past abuse histories and some have not

• Family instability common across non/sexual delinquent youth, not unique causal factor

• Robust predictors: attachment issues, peer problems, high sex drive, impulsiveness, higher levels of masculine inadequacy, impersonal sexual behaviours

  • Insecure attachment increases social isolation, anger towards women

• Biological (sexual arousal), social (family problems), psychological (attachment injuries) aspects of adolescent development can all contribute at diff levels to sexually abusive behaviours

Treatment Recommendations

• CBT can target variety of factors

• Treatment approaches operating from a human ecological viewpoint more effective than traditional sex offender treatment focusing on individual characteristics

• Human ecology evolved from biology - blend assumptions to better understand a phenomenon, can account for dynamic development, attachment levels, trauma history, etc.

Multisystemic therapy (MST)

• Ecological approach - home-based program, effective at treating ASOs

• Designed to treat delinquent adolescents that have not committed a sexual crime

• Hypothesize delinquent behaviours evolve from risk factors that are affected by multiple systems (school, family system)

• Theorizes that human behaviours can be understood from a developmental and interactional context

• Individualize treatment and focus interventions on multiple systems in which the youth resides, using them as agent of change

• Can choose to increase family therapy sessions, meet with school officials, etc. to address trauma/mental health conditions

• Study found those receiving MST sexually reoffended at lower rates than those in individual therapy

Humanistic perspective

• Longo (2004): ASO treatment should be geared towards helping the adolescent make connections internally (emotion-management skills, addressing past trauma) and externally (connecting with family, peers)

• Catalyst for change is the therapeutic relationship

• Humanistic POV: adolescent’s culture, race, and spirituality need to be considered for treatment interventions to work

• Short-term CBT can prevent future sexual acting out but should be altered to match learning style

• Dynamic play therapy effective intervention fro children struggling with sexual behaviour problems

• Incorporating humanstic perspective while practicing an ecological model allow for treatment needs of ASOs and families

Application of civil sanctions to youth

• Policy assumptions driven application of registration, notification, civil commitment to children who have committed sexual harm

• Difficult for them to obtain education, housing, employment

• Schools prohibiting activities, limit technology and Internet

• Hallmark of juvenile justice systems - youth are diff from adults and should not be held to the same levels of accountability

  • Emphasize rehabilitation and records kept confidential

• Research shows that youth who have committed sexual crimes are diff, more pro-social

• Social isolation, humiliation, stigma for having to regularly re-assert their status as registered sex offenders

• Registries have no effect on sexual recidivism

• Youth and families experience negative social impacts, 20& attempted suicide

Risk assessment

• Civil sanctions viewed as necessary due to high risk sex offenders influenced development of risk assessment

• RNR model highly influential in sex offender management for both populations

  • Emphasized risk assessment more than assessment of needs

  • Led to development of methodologies that focus on risk rather than youth’s needs

• Caldwell (2016): sexual reoffending in adolescent populations less than 3%

  • Authors look to adult literature to identify possible risk factors and test them as predictors for youth

  • Or take a actuarial approach of identifying factors in official records or other available sources and testing their association with reoffending within large samples of identified youths

Risk assessment tools

3 tools: ERASOR, J-SOAP-II, JSORRAT-II (MEGA)

• ERASOR: developed following review of risk factors identified in adult and juvenile literature

• J-SOAP-II: drawn from factors that have shown predictive validity in adult sex offenders

• JSORRAT: only truly actuarial tool available for juveniles

Major findings:

• No consistent differences between them with respect to predictive validity

• Evidence for predictive validity for all of the scales is inconsistent

• ERASOR: total scores sometimes perform well/better than risk levels assigned by structured professional judgement

→ development of RA tools and identification of risk factors hampered by low recidivism rate

• Questions the whole RA enterprise

• Using tools likely to result in significantly higher numbers of false positives than true positives (instruments label more low-moderate risk youths as high risk than they are to identify high risk youth) → many youth in sex offender registries/on civil commitment when they should not be

• Adolescence is a time of change (personality, physical maturity, social interactions), unlikely that static risk factors can be identified that consistently predict sexually abusive behaviour

• Low base rae for sexual offending among youth + few re-offend (if they do, it is nonsexual) = RA specific to sexual offenders unnecessary - just use valid procedures routinely used within juvenile justice system

Key Points

• Assumptions: unique group of delinquents, require specialized intensive treatment to avoid future harm, treatment requires non-traditional techniques - all false

• Treatment of youth who have sexually offended requires the same therapeutic skills and relationships as any other adolescent population

• Mentorship program to ASOs effective - role of social isolation after offending

• Little justification for extreme management techniques