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Its role in recidivism and offender reintegration. Criminal
Justice Studies, 19(2), 193–208.SEXOFFENDERNEEDS
ASSESSMENTRATING (SONAR)
Now primarily of historical interest, the Sex Offender
Needs Assessment Rating (SONAR) was the first
focused attempt to assess change in sexual offenders
based on dynamic risk factors. Dynamic risk factors are
personal skill deficits, predilections, and learned behav-
iors correlated with sexual recidivism that can be
changed through a process of “effortful intervention”
(i.e., treatment or supervision). It was theorized that if
such intervention reduced these risk-relevant factors,
there would be a concomitant reduction in the likelihood
that the offender would recidivate with another sexual
crime. The SONAR demonstrated adequate internal
consistency and a moderate ability to differentiate sex-
ual recidivists from nonrecidivists (r = .43; ROC
[receiver operating characteristic] area of .74).
As the 1990s drew to a close, the profession was
making ever increasing use of actuarial risk assess-
ments for sexual and violent offenders. The debate
about the utility of such measures and their ability to
reliably rank offenders according to risk of re-offense
had, for the most part, been decided in favor of actuar-
ial assessment. General acceptance of actuarial assess-
ment grew as a number of tools (Violence Risk
Appraisal Guide [VRAG], Sex Offender Risk
Appraisal Guide [SORAG], Rapid Risk Assessment for
Sexual Offense Recidivism [RRASOR], Minnesota
Sex Offender Screening Tool–Revised [MnSOST–R],
STATIC–99) gained acceptance in the courts and were
used in most jurisdictions. However, those assessing
risk in actual sexual offenders had no reliable technol-
ogy for assessing change in risk status subsequent to
treatment or other intervention. Actuarial measures,
listed above, are based almost totally on the assessmentof historical, nonchangeable (static) factors that are
insensitive to clinical change. There had been previous
attempts to measure dynamic or “changeable” factors,
most notably in Don Andrews and Jim Bonta’s LSI–R;
but prior to SONAR, there were no focused attempts to
delineate changeable risk factors for individual types of
crimes such as sexual crimes or violent crimes.
Using a group of 409 sexual offenders on commu-
nity supervision, the SONAR authors assessed by both
file review and interview of the supervising community
parole or probation officer the antecedents of sexual
recidivism in a group of Canadian sexual offenders
from nine Canadian provinces. Half of these sexual
offenders had sexually recidivated while on community
supervision, and half had not sexually recidivated while
on community supervision. The sample was also
roughly divided into equal numbers of incest offenders,
child molesters, and rapists. Offenders were matched
on offense history, type of index victim, and jurisdic-
tion; nonrecidivists had an average of 24 months of
supervision in the community, while recidivists had, on
the whole, re-offended within 15 months. The inter-
view and the file review sought data on 128 individual
items from within 22 risk-relevant domains.
Comparison of these two groups of sexual offenders
on this number of risk-relevant factors revealed a subset
of those factors that were seen to change for the worse
in the recidivistic group during the period of community
supervision. Often, deterioration in the assessed areas of
functioning preceded a sexual re-offense. These factors
were divisible into two categories, each of which had an
attending temporal association. Labeled Stablefactors,
the following five risk-relevant factors—intimacy
deficits, social influences, antisocial attitudes, sexual
self-regulation, and general self-regulation—seemed to
be amenable to clinical intervention or treatment but on
an intermediate term. These behavioral influences were
seen as more “stable” in the personality and requiring
sustained effort to change. The other four factors
seemed to change on a much faster basis and to be a
reaction to rapidly changing environmental stresses,
conditions, or events. Labeled Acuterisk factors, sub-
stance abuse, negative mood, anger/hostility, and oppor-
tunities for victim access were seen as transient
conditions that would only last hours or days. As such,
these factors were seen as more strongly related to pre-
dicting the arrival of imminent re-offense. Statistical
analysis provided a scale, showing moderate predictive
accuracy, that was able to assess ongoing changes in risk
in sexual offenders.Sex Offender Needs Assessment Rating (SONAR)——— 725S-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:44 PM Page 725