Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

(lily) #1
offenders are re-arrested for new sex crimes within a 3-
to 6-year follow-up period. Longer follow-up studies
have found that after 15 years, the vast majority (about
three quarters) of convicted sex offenders had notbeen
re-arrested for a new sex crime. All these studies
involved very large sample sizes ranging from about
4,700 to 29,000 subjects.
There is also a widespread belief that sex offenders
do not respond to psychological therapies. Early
studies were unable to demonstrate that treatment
reduced recidivism. However, more recent research
indicates that contemporary cognitive-behavioral sex
offender treatment can reduce recidivism by about
40%. A more recent meta-analysis found that 10% of
sex offenders who received treatment were re-arrested
for new sex crimes, while 17% of untreated sex
offenders re-offended. This was a statistically signifi-
cant difference. A recent experimental design was
unable to detect general differences in recidivism
between treated and untreated groups but did find that
those sex offenders who successfully completed the
treatment goals were re-arrested at significantly lower
rates than those who did not.
Though most sex offenders do not re-offend sexu-
ally over time, and many do not meet the criteria for a
paraphilia disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,fourth edition
(DSM-IV), some subgroups of sex offenders are dan-
gerous and likely to re-offend. Research consistently
suggests that pedophiles who molest boys are at high-
est risk to re-offend and have the largest number of vic-
tims. Rapists of adult women are also among those sex
offenders most likely to re-offend, and they are also
more likely than other types of sex offenders to use
weapons and physically injure their victims.
Incestuous offenders consistently have the lowest
recidivism rates. At the same time, research has found
that many sex offenders have committed more sex
crimes than those for which they have been arrested.
So, official recidivism rates are likely to underestimate
true offense rates. Also, some sex offenders abuse mul-
tiple types of victims (i.e., adults and children, or both
boys and girls), and official documents may not fully
reflect an offender’s patterns and risk factors.
Those challenges notwithstanding, great progress
has been made in the ability to assess risk for future
sexual violence and estimate the likelihood that a sex
offender will commit a new sex crime in the future.
Researchers have identified factors statistically associ-
ated with recidivism and have combined those

factors into risk assessment instruments. In general, the
more risk factors a person displays, the more likely he
or she is to re-offend. Risk factors most highly corre-
lated with sex offense recidivism include sexual attrac-
tion to children, sexual deviance in general, previous
arrests and charges for both sexual and nonsexual
offenses, male victims, extrafamilial victims, stranger
victims, variety of offending behavior, intimacy
deficits, noncontact offenses, and age under 25.
Some states use this knowledge of risk factors to
assess the likelihood of recidivism and classify sex
offenders into categories (i.e., high, low, and moderate
risk) for community notification purposes. States that use
risk assessment often provide a different amount of
information to the public depending on the danger an
offender poses to the community. For example, high-risk
offenders (for instance, a child molester who victimized
multiple prepubescent boys in a cub scout troop) might
have their address, photo, and information about their
crimes displayed on a public Internet registry, while
lower-risk offenders might be subjected to less aggres-
sive community notification. Using risk classification
systems benefits states in several ways. They are a more
efficient use of resources because more aggressive noti-
fication procedures are reserved only for higher-risk indi-
viduals. They also allow the public to better identify who
poses the most severe threat to women and children in
the community. Broad notification policies, on the other
hand, weaken citizens’ ability to tell who is truly danger-
ous, use vast resources to warn communities about sex
offenders who may pose very little risk, and can interfere
with successful community reentry.
Recent federal policies (i.e., the 2006 Adam Walsh
Act) have enhanced registration and notification
requirements, so it is likely that community notifica-
tion will become more inclusive. There is a need for
continued research to investigate the effectiveness of
community notification in preventing sexual assault.

Jill S. Levenson

See alsoChild Sexual Abuse; Sex Offender Assessment; Sex
Offender Recidivism; Sex Offender Treatment; Sex
Offender Typologies

Further Readings
Hanson, R. K., & Morton-Bourgon, K. (2005). The
characteristics of persistent sexual offenders: A meta-
analysis of recidivism studies. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 73(6), 1154–1163.

724 ———Sex Offender Community Notification (Megan’s Laws)

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