Sex Crime exam 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

• Moral panic

  • Term coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972

• Recidivism rates of persons who commit sex crimes

  • Lower than expected

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• “Sex offender” vs. Person who committed a sex crime

  • People are more willing to volunteer to work with a person who committed a sex offense than a sex offender

• Seduction theory of childhood sexuality

  • Later be recognized as unfortunately worded since it implies some sort of willingness by the child

• Definition of sex crimes (federal level)

  • Offense involving a sexual acts or sexual contact

• Alfred Kinsey: views on homosexuality

  • Were ends of continuum, with many people falling somewhere between the two

  • Proposed a scale that ranged from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual)

• Sources of current numbers of sex crimes:

  • UNODC – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

    • Annual self-report survey conducted in countries belonging to the United Nations

  • UCR – Uniform Crime Reports: U.S Numbers – Annual reports of crimes and arrests that have occurred in the United States, published by the FBI

    • To be discontinued soon. Includes overall numbers of crimes committed each year

  • NIBRS – National Incident Based Reporting System

    • Collects detailed information about all crimes

  • Crime Data Explorer

    • Interactive use-friendly of UCR + NIBRS data combined

  • NCVS – National Crime Victimization Survey

    • Information about crimes not reported to law enforcement, capturing “the dark figure of crime”

  • NVAWS - National Violence Against Women Survey

    • Administered over the phone and uses a complex design to yield a nationally representative sample

• Myths regarding sex crimes and persons who commit them

  • Sex crime rates are high and getting higher

  • All those who commit a sex crime will recidivate

  • Those persons must be mentally ill

  • Child molesters are alike – “boogiemen”

Chapter 2: Theory

• Definition and purpose of a theory

  • Definition: someone’s personal ideas about the causes of something

• Sex-crime specific theories:

  • Precondition theory – They have some sort of motivation to commit child sexual abuse, overcome any internal and external inhibitions, and overcome any possible resistance from the child

• Probabilistic vs. Deterministic

  • Probabilistic – cause may result in a specific outcome

  • Deterministic – cause always results in outcome

• Criminological theories (applied to sex crimes):

  • Social control theory

    • Also called “social bonding theory”

    • Four bond that prevent crime

      • Attachment

      • Commitment

      • Involvement

      • Belief

  • Self-control theory

    • Low self-control increases the likelihood of committing crimes, including sex crimes

  • Routine activities theory

    • Attention on victims

    • Three elements for occurrence of crime

      • Motivated offender

      • Suitable target

      • Absence of capable guardian

  • Social learning theory: imitation/ experiential learning/ vicarious learning

    • People learn behavior by observing the behavior of other people

• Know the main concepts associated with each theory

  • Cognitive schemas

  • Cognitive distortions

  • Cognitive biases

  • Experiential learning

  • Vicarious learning

• Personality development: traits associated with sexual offending

  • Impulsivity

  • Callousness

  • Lack of empathy

  • Narcissism

  • Sadism

  • Personality pathology

Psychological Theories:

• Freud:

  • 5 stages of psychosexual development

    • Oral

    • Anal

    • Phallic

    • Latency

    • Genital

  • Fixation/Regression

    • Explanations of abnormal behavior – occurs during the phallic stage

• Bowlby: attachment theory

  • Attachment to caregiver: evolutionary behavior and innate

  • Babies must attach to someone when young to develop proper relationships to others later in life

• Behaviorists:

  • S-R (stimulus-response) connection – reaction that the body does

• Pavlov: classical conditioning – Classical Conditioning

  • Involves eliciting a conditioned responds “a dog salivating at the sight of food” from a neutral stimulus (the sound of a bell)

• Skinner:

  • Reinforcements/punishments – Operant conditioning

  • Conditioning/ neutral stimuli/positive and negative reinforcement

Biological theories:

• Hormones (Testosterone) – Violence is the result of high levels

• Neurotransmitters (Serotonin) – Affect brain function, mood, and autonomic reactions

  • Linked to violent behavior

• Brain structure – temporal lobe

  • Brain differences may exist between persons who have committed a sex crime and persons who have not

• Genetics - Rare combinations of chromosomes (XXY, XXXY, XYY) been suggested and may be linked to the commission of sex crimes

• Intelligence deficits – Molest children because the actual age of the victim matches the mental age of the offender

Cognitive-Based Theories:

• Cognitive schemas - Basic building blocks that help individuals organize information and make sense of the world – they involve organized patterns of previous experiences, which are relied upon to interpret new information

• Cognitive distortions/biases – Type of automatic thought process that develops and assists in minimizing the seriousness of the offense

Chapter 3: Rape & sexual assault

• Sexual violence pyramid

  • The peak of the pyramid is where rape and sexual assault are located

• Rape culture

  • A complex set of belief that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women

  • Attitudes and belief system: attitudes supportive of rape often align with other isms

• Rape reform movement and what’s involved (1970)

  • Rules of evidence: victim must physically resist attack and provide corroborating evidence

  • Victims’ prior sexual history admissible

  • Males and wives as victims were ten not acknowledge

• Rape shield laws (what they involve)

  • To prevent a victim’s sexual history from being introduced as evidence against the victim’s credibility during court proceedings

  • Improve the treatment of rape victims

• Rape typologies

  • A classification system used to categories individuals who are alike into. Distinct categories

  • Typologies are only as reliable as the indicators used to construct them

• How rape cases are treated in the criminal justice system

  • Not to report due to fears of not being believed or re-traumatization during the legal process

• Case attrition

  • The failure of a case to proceed to the next phase of the criminal justice process common with crimes of rape

• Unfounded cases and why cases are unfounded

  • Lack of penetration or now evidence of force

  • Victim may Abe ulterior motive for making the charge

  • Victim is under the influence of alcohol or drugs

  • There is evidence of a previous consensual sexual relationship between the victim and perpetrator

  • Victim is highly distraught and emotional

  • Victim is too calm and “matter of fact”

• Good-looking effect

  • The victim is physically attractive, as well as defendants, tend to fare more favorably compared to less attractive people

• Intimacy effect

  • Rape between intimates is considered less serious than stranger rapes

• Considering what “consent” means

  • “I agree to do this”

  • And “I understand what I’m agreeing to do”

• Why prosecutors drop rape cases

  • Police decide to report is baseless, so it is marked as unfounded

• Characteristics of those who commit rape (and what each of those characteristics entails)

  • Hostile masculinity

  • Aggressive sexual beliefs

  • Physical and psychological aggression

  • History of violences

  • Alcohol use and abuse

• How often rape cases are prosecuted/result in conviction

  • 22-25%

History of “rape”:

• Historical perceptions of rape

  • Property crime

• Difference between legacy and new definition

  • Too outdated and outdated, while the new definition is more inclusive and reflects the reality of sexual assault

• Be able to assess whether a situation Is rape/Isn’t rape

  • Consent

Chapter 4: child sexual abuse (CAS)

• CSA (definition) – Child sexual abuse: broad spectrum of behaviors in which an adult engages in inappropriate sex acts with a child

• CSA myths

  • People who sexually abuse children target any and all children

  • Children who are sexually abused will sexually abuse others when they grow up

  • Everyone who sexually abuse children is a pedophile

• CSA vs. pedophile

  • CSA

    • Primary sexual attraction/orientation to adults

    • More likely to commit intrafamilial abuse

    • Lower number of victims

    • Lower rates of recidivism

  • Pedophile

    • May abuse family members

    • High recidivism rates after incarceration and treatment

    • May have hundreds of victims over their lifetimes

    • Are uncomfortable with and reject adult intimacy

• CSA typologies:

  • Groth’s Typology

  • FBI Typology

    • To evaluate how child molesters have sex with children to identify, arrest, and convict them

      • Has undergone several revisions

• Grooming:

  • The skillful manipulation of a child into situations where they can be more readily sexually bused and less likely to disclose their incident

  • The order of stages

    • Friendship

    • Relationship

    • Risk assessment stage

    • Exclusivity

    • Sexual

    • Concluding

  • What happens in each stage

• Theory of infantile sexuality

  • Reports of child sexual abuse were imagined

• Battered child syndrome (Henry Kempe)

  • Clinical diagnosis for children experiencing repeated physical abuse

  • Established duty of physicians to fully evaluate injured children and guarantee non-recurrence of expected repetition of trauma

• Child abuse and prevention act

  • All state has statutes that identify mandated reporters

  • Social worker, school prevention, medical examiners, mental health professionals, and law enforcement officials

  • In 18 states, anyone who suspect a child sexual abuse is required to report regardless of profession

• Testimonial competence

  • Very young victims (infant – 6) are at a significant disadvantage in successfully prosecution and adjunction of suspected sexual abuse

• Factors affecting criminal trial proceedings in child sexual abuse cases

  • Child sexual abuse cases how one of the lowest convictions rates

    • Medical

1.     Considered one of the best forms of evidence

2.     Not available in most cases

3.     Presence of evidence can affect prosecutorial decision making

o   Behavioral evidence

1.     The way victims behave may have substantial impact on the trial outcome

2.     Mid-adolosecent children are likely to be viewed as most credible