Sex crimes evince such strong feelings of revulsion and repugnance that it is perhaps not surprising that people misunderstand their nature. The public, whose opinions are reinforced by portrayals in the media and in popular culture, believes that sex offenders will almost always repeat their predatory acts in the future and that all treatments for perpetrators are ineffective. The truth is not so cut and dried—and gives us cause for hope in certain cases.
Before we discuss these beliefs, a few basics are in order. The two most common types of sex offenses are rape and child molestation, but others exist. In most cases, the victim, usually female, knows the perpetrator, generally male. By some estimates, one third or more of all sex offenders are under the age of 18, with some even as young as five years. Most begin to offend sexually in adolescence. Now what does the research tell us about common beliefs?
Repeat Offenders
First, the notion that recidivism (repeat offending) is inevitable needs a second look. Recently sex crimes researcher Jill Levenson of Lynn University in Florida and her colleagues found that the average member of the general public believes that 75 percent of sex offenders will reoffend. This perception is consistent with media portrayals in such television programs as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, in which sex offenders are almost always portrayed as chronic repeaters.
The evidence suggests otherwise. Sex crimes researchers R. Karl Hanson and Kelly E. Morton-Bourgon of Public Safety Canada conducted a large-scale meta-analysis (quantitative review) of recidivism rates among adult sex offenders. They found a rate of 14 percent over a period averaging five to six years. Recidivism rates increased over time, reaching 24 percent by 15 years. The figures are clearly out of alignment with the public’s more dire expectations.
Also contrary to media depictions, most offenders do not “specialize” in one type of sex crime. Most are “generalists” who engage in a variety of sex and nonsexual crimes as well. Hanson and Morton-Bourgon found that sex offenders had a total recidivism rate (for both sex crimes and nonsexual violent crimes) of approximately 36 percent over a period of five to six years. Nevertheless, perpetrators of different types of sex crimes exhibit varying rates of repeat offending. The 15-year recidivism rate is 13 percent for incest perpetrators, 24 percent for rapists, and 35 percent for child molesters of boy victims.
When providing clarifications about the lower than generally acknowledged rates of recidivism, we must be careful not to oversimplify. Recidivism research is as difficult as it is important. For instance, although average rates tell us what percentage reoffends one or more times, we also need to be aware that a subset reoffends at a frighteningly high rate. In addition, there are reasons to think that published findings underestimate the true rates. Most research necessarily omits those offenders who were not detected and arrested or whose victims did not report the crime. Further, many sex offenders plea-bargain down to a nonsexual offense.
Still, there are other reasons to believe that recidivism rates may not be that different from what researchers have found. Frequent offenders are more likely than other offenders to be caught. Many safeguards probably help to keep the recidivism rate in check. Sex offenders released on probation are closely monitored, and those who are considered to be at high risk for recidivism are required to register with authorities. These registries are distributed to law-enforcement personnel. Finally, states are legally required to publicly identify higher-risk sex offenders. The Department of Justice coordinates a Web site (www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/registry.htm) that enables anyone to search for the identity and location of known offenders.
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21 Comments
Add CommentI hope that more research can go into this field, because right now it seems nearly everyone thinks (or rather feels) that all sex offenders are fated to reoffend. As a result, most companies, including those with a policy of hiring ex-offenders, will not consider hiring sex offenders (even non-personal offenders, such as those convicted of possessing child pornography), and many volunteer organizations will refuse offers of free assistance from sex offenders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are you so interested in this topic? I agree with you and am just curious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSex offenders are put into another "class" because it's SO hard to stop doing something "sexual" that you do. Sex is THE reason we are here, it drives EVERYTHING we do. If you have a sexual deviation, you ARE inclined not to be able to stop it, because the sex drive is so strong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease take a look at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.forums.sexoffenderalliance.com/viewforum.php?f=30
We are hungry for comments on "NO MORE VICTIMS!" and "Could you become a sex offender?"
It's always refreshing to see someone attempt to deal with this issue in a rational fashion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile this article makes the point out that “sex crimes†include a heterogenous variety of crimes, many of the studies cited lump all types of sex crimes together, rendering the information almost useless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStranger rape of adults is usually motivated by anger and misogyny, not sexual desire. An adult who has consensual sex with a 16 year old often inflicts a lot of emotional damage, but there’s no particular reason to think they are mentally ill. A child molestor of pre-pubescent children, on the other hand, is almost certainly mentally ill.
I find it hard to believe that there is any relationship at all between these three particular categories.
The actual relationships between different sex crimes is a matter of scientific investigation, and can’t simply be assumed. Which sex crimes are good predictors of which other sex crimes? What are the recidivism rates for particular sex crimes? How treatable are different sex crimes?
There is burning need for rational answers to these questions. We can’t afford public policy based on myths and gut revulsion.
I have been a registered sex offender for over seven years and I am pleased to finally start to see some educated and thoughtful discussions on this matter. For far too long all that you have heard and read about concerning people who commit crimes of a sexual nature consisted of new and more hurtful ways to continue to punish and demonize them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can tell you that good treatment programs coupled with a positive outlook DOES help people change their behaviour. It is never easy and the political and social climate of public scorn and hatred makes it harder to get back to normality, but thankfully I have a good family that has supported me AND the victim of my crime. It is a daily mindset, much like a person that is dealing with alcoholism, that allows one to identify and deal with any inappropriate urges.
I just wish politicians at all levels (local, state , and federal) would stop using registered sex offenders as tools to get votes and create even more ways to violate civil liberties.
Sex crimes have been the bonanza of the century for law enforcement (larger staff and budgets), suppliers of monitoring equipment (GPS trackers), politicians (politics of fear votes), feminists (a new way to subjugate men) and the media (more viewership and newspapers sold). The population is fed misinformation and laws are passed that punish males from the age of 6 to 76. We now have 25% of the world population of inmates, and the world watches us and shakes their heads with disbelief.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRon,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am trying to help a friend of mine get a job, since he has been out. Have you been successful and how did you do it if so.
I really believe in him and have been doing all I can to help. He is a really good person and I want to help him. If no one gives him a job, how do people think that he will be able to make it?
The statistic in this study is far to dependent on its data source from repeat offenders being caught. They state that TV shows perpetuate a false belief that they are more likely to repeat their offenses?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet this study is doing the same exact thing on the other side of the spectrum. You think every registered sex offender who repeats their crimes gets caught? Think every registered sex offender is going to honestly participate in a study like this?
This study does nothing but underscore the threat these people pose. I would rather subscribe to an over inflated perception of danger than an underscored one. Anyone with common sense would do the same
Sex offenders griping about their trials and tribulations of the preconceptions of others can cry in their pillow. You made a choice to offend, and that has permanently altered your life, not just the lives of your victims. Live with it!
This is crazy to me. Percentages and such, this is not a game, we shouldn't be experimenting with lives by trying to rehabilitate sex offenders and then letting them out to see what happens. Children getting molested is no experiment, we can't take chances with innocent lives, come on people, THINK....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProblem: over 1/2 of rape and sexual assault cases are never are reported. Making this article utterly pointless, because how do we know anything about repeat offenses when they aren't reported in the first place?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave the two authors of this article ever taken a human sexuality or women's studies class in college or any other subject related? You do realize that scientific american might be read by someone who has their PhD in say Human Sexuality or Women's studies? I used to think Scientific American was a magazine for intellectuals, but now I'm not so sure.
Anyway you don't even have to have a degree in that field: Everybody knows that over half of rapes and sexual abuses aren't reported. That factoid is taught in sex-ed classes in middle schools (like mine) and in college courses. So in your research you must have come across this fact, and ignored it. It's on RAINN's website, it says, "60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported" under Punishing Rapists, http://www.rainn.org/get-information/legal-information.
Or don't you know what RAINN is?
LOL. Feminism: A new way to subjugate men. That's why feminism started in the first place, to subjugate men. Fuck that voting rights and college education crap, the real reason: to subjugate men.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo JoeRocker: this is what ails the entire debate: a lack of discernment between different types of behavior. As noted, all sex offenses are not equal. Some have no victimization, such as consensual sex between a teen and "adult" of 21 who have been dating and having sex since before the "adult" became 21, possession of child pornography (which looms well into the realm of creating Thought Police Laws), and such minimal and unintended "victimization" as public urination, mooning, even streaking now would label you a sex offender even though there were stampedes of this popular craze when I was in my early teens, are all these people then deviants who will find it impossible to further "victimize" and permanently damage poor unsuspecting citizens and be an ongoing threat to the well being of our children?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe laws show no discernment either. Factors such as age of first offense, life history of having and maintaining normal interpersonal relationships and jobs, plus many others, factor into the threat of re-offense and often even the nature and true motivations behind the original offense. Yet so eager are enforcement officials, judges and district attorneys, to capitalize on the politics of fear, to be "the enemy of your enemy", that mitigating circumstances such as this simply can't sway their appetite for the political gain possible by ruining lives of individuals and often, by extension, whole families over even some of the most innocuous events.
And then, public perception such as this, that sex is such a primal drive that any bent within it is also too primal for the "offender" to overcome and as such will remain a constant and irredeemable threat to society, that makes returning to life, trying to provide for themselves or their family, a tremendous and often overwhelming struggle.
Assume for a minute that you truly do concern yourself with society's welfare upon release of a sex offender? Then the best protection is supporting a return to a self-supporting life, job, family. Rather than the onerous demands put upon them today. It is, on a whole, counter productive, and many in law enforcement agree with this position upon truly living with the realities.
To StellaStar: trying to whittle away at the validity of a study by citing utterly insupportable statistics as "X amount of such crimes go unreported" is ludicrous. Do instances of horrendous violation go unreported? No doubt, as do instances of other crimes as well. But trying to state a precise number that has absolutely no basis is ignorance. It's a WAG, a very unscientific one at that, based almost entirely on the later life anecdotal dialogues with women, some of whom have doubtless been damaged by a hideous violation, but many, as some who have worked with these women have said, who have lost lives, have suffered broken dreams and promises, and reach for a reason external to themselves, seek sympathy and understanding for the place they have in life, and just as eye witness testimony of even earnest people is often exceptionally flawed, the experiences related by many of these women is suspect, at best. No, not every one of them, and certainly their could be a grain of truth to much of what is related, but not nearly enough to contradict a sound, fact-based study that simply goes against your dearly held prejudices. We need a lot more light shined on what is happening. Today you sneer at the need, because it's not you involved. Wait until it is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for approaching this issue in a sensible manner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is an excerpt from the national Center for Sex Offender Management website:
"Do all sex offenders go on to commit additional sex crimes?
No. Current research varies, but overall the data tells us that between 12% and 24% (or between one and three of every ten offenders) are known to have repeated their crimes vi. However, these rates are commonly believed to be underestimated, since we know that sex crimes often go unreported. It is important to understand that sex offenders pose varying levels of risk to reoffend: in other words, while some offenders are unlikely to offend again, others are significantly more likely to do so."
It has been my experience that generic policies are often enacted, covering all manner of issues, with little or no concern to the individual.
I know someone who's victim is a family member and the public notification and residency restrictions not only affect the life of the offender, but also the life of the victim. This is tragic...
Thanks again for the article and I look forward to seeing more detailed studies and more reasonalble laws concerning sex offenders in the future.
Ok, first FACT: RAINN or any other organizations statement that (pick a percentage) of crimes of any nature go unreported is pure speculation based on nothing more than WAGs masquerading as "scientific" WAGs. It's like saying x percentage of petty theft cases go unreported because some family member is involved or what have you. Pitiful excuse for trumping up the hysteria of a crime that is of course heinous yet is heaped with hyperbole because of it's intrinsically lurid nature. It attracts exaggerated attention yet the real impact on society in terms of numbers and/or recidivism rates is ignored because it's such an easy sell for politicians to be "tough on crime" but using the tragic victimization of innocents as a platform to become your hero by being the enemy of your enemy. But that's not justice, nor does it take into account the human toll on families involved as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisViolent crimes of any stripe are the hallmarks of a vicious disregard for a perpetrator's victims. But as alluded to in the article, when sex is a part of it, public and private outrage is stoked beyond reason. Such that when politicians saw the ease at which this outrage could be exploited, they expanded to definitions of "sex" crimes to include crimes where no actual sex was even a part of the act, and even in the case of possession of child pornography, where the arrest report would say "victim, none", you have therefore a "sex" crime with no victim of the perpetrator, yet that person is labeled and relegated to the same fates, in terms of their lives after prison anyway, as those who have committed violent acts of victimization. And to top that off, research by newer Canadian studies have indicated real recidivism rates of many of these non-violent "sex" crimes are in the single digits ( http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/48/5/600.abstract ) .
It's time to deal with the reality, not the visceral reaction, of these crimes and their perpetrators, and stop allowing politicians to be the "enemy of our enemy, therefore our friend" by allowing their hyperbole to become policy.
I am always leery when I see articles written about former sex offenders. The people writing the articles always manage to put in zingers and twisted truths to justify their bigotry. Before I got halfway through this article I was sure that it was written by either a psychologist or psychiatrist looking to justify their position. If they really want to quote studies done by other groups . I would suggest that they take a look at (1989) Furby, Weinrott, and Blackshaw study of these studies being the most extensive and meticulously analytical. The studies found that offenders placed on probation with NO therapy are the least likely to re-offend. Offenders sent to jail or Prison also WITHOUT THERAPY are rated second least likely to re-offend. But those who are mandated, volunteer (under threat of prison or jail time) or are sentenced to Behavior Modification therapy are at least twice and as much as ten times as likely to re-offend in the committing of a new sex crime, and will commit other types of violent crimes at unreasonable rates as well. In that study of studies, one stands out, and that is The jacks study in 1962 looked into NON-TREATED offenders showed the re-offense rate of 3.7% over 15 years that’s 2/10 of 1% per year , this must be used as the base line set as laid out by Robyn M. Dawes in his book House of Cards "Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth", as he stated "A person who claims that a treatment is effective must demonstrate that it has an effect in comparison to a hypothetical counterfactual, obtained through construction of a randomly constituted control group." Thereby any treatment program with a reoffence rate higher then 3.7% for a 15 year period must be consider a failure of the program not the individuals in it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for allowing me to post my comment. "The evidence is overwhelming, as detailed in this report, that these laws cause great harm to the people subject to them." "Registration laws should be narrowed in scope and duration. Publicly accessible online registries should be eliminated, and community notification should be accomplished solely by law enforcement officials. Blanket residency restrictions should be abolished." these are direct quotes from no easy answers human rights watch. "I based my support of broad-based community notification laws on my
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisassumption that sex offenders have the highest recidivism rates of any criminal. But the high recidivism rates I assumed to be true do not exist." this my friends was spoken to you by an expert-Patty wetterling who i love and admire."Some politicians cite recidivism rates for sex offenders that are as
high as 80-90 percent. In fact, most (three out of four) former sex offenders do not reoffend and most sex crimes are not committed by former offenders." this was quoted from your article - "Recently sex crimes researcher Jill Levenson of Lynn University in Florida and her colleagues found that the average member of the general public believes that 75 percent of sex offenders will reoffend." i took it from their article that they said 75% of sex offenders will not re-offend, you listed it the exact opposite way.(p.4 of no easy answers.). no easy answers recommendations:"
What do you know about it? How many real RSOs do you know. How many stories have you heard directly from the source and or their victims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have any clue how many involuntary victims are out there? You assume that every person that has been legally labeled a victim by some court, sees their self as a victim.
Not only that, consider all of the false and inflated charges out there. How do you know that you won't end up as a sex offender some day? You must be really, really stupid if you think you are immune. Are you married? Do you have any children living in the house with you? Be careful buddy. All it takes is for one of those to become unhappy with you and decide its time for you to go, and your outta there.
All it takes is for your wife to call the police after lovemaking (so that there is some forensic evidence), and claim that you held her down and raped her. Better yet, after doing it, start a fight with you and she attacks you violently. Even if you don't hit her back, all she's got to do is scratch you up and claim that they were marks made while she was defending herself against you. Now your semen is in there too as proof of rape. Your outta there man.
Every give your children a bath? Sure who doesn't. What if your bratty 16 year old wants to get her way, and threatens to accuse you of molesting her all of her life. "Oh daddy used to rub my tootoo in the bathtub." After shes been having promiscuous sex with all of her high school friends since she was 13. Her hymen has been long gone. In a CPS medical exam, all she's got to say is "yeah, daddy took that a long time ago". Your outta there man.
You don't even have to go to prison. Even deferred adjudication won't keep you off the registry.
Your stepdaughter, who never wanted you in the house anyway, and is street wise. Your outta there.
She grows up and regrets that she got you 25 years in prison instead of a few days in jail like she thought, and writes the prison officials to recant her statement. Sorry charlie. The court isn't really trying to hear that.
Like to walk naked in your own living room. Its a free country right. Oops, you left the curtains open by mistake last night, and the neighbors kid saw you. Your going to jail.
There are over 750,000 registered sex offenders in the US, and that list is growing fast. The overwhelming majority of those cases are minor or slightly more than minor. In so many the evidence is questionable.
Stop judging people for being on the registry, and start talking to them. You might see some things differently.
well said!
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