Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offenders and tended to minimize the public costs associated with crime. Drawing on expanded monetization estimates produced by Cohen and Piquero, this study assessed the monetary costs for five crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary) imposed by a sample of (n ¼ 654) convicted and incarcerated murderers. The average cost per murder exceeded $17.25 million and the average murderer in the current sample posed costs approaching $24 million. The most violent and prolific offenders singly produced costs greater than $150-160 million in terms of victim costs, criminal justice costs, lost offender productivity, and public willingness-to-pay costs.

In the United States, inmates maintain high rates of recidivism when released from correctional institutions. Although a large body of research addresses indicators of risk for recidivism after release, less is known about the stability of institutional misconduct across periods of incarceration. A limited amount of research has explored the relationship between inmate disciplinary reports incurred during prior terms of incarceration and subsequent institutional misconduct. Based on official infraction data from 1,005 inmates selected from the Arizona Department of Corrections, the current study found that both male and female inmates who have incurred disciplinary reports during prior terms of incarceration participated in violent and nonviolent institutional misconduct during subsequent terms of incarceration. Implications for theory and research are explored.

Extant research indicates that inmates with street gang history are prone for prison misconduct but that inmates convicted of homicide offenses are less likely to be noncompliant. No research has explored the interaction between street gang history and homicide offending. Based on official infraction data from 1,005 inmates selected from the Southwestern United States, the current study found that inmates with street gang history and convictions for homicide offenses were significantly involved in six types of institutional misconduct, net the effects of homicide offending, offense severity, street and prison gang risk, violence history, and demographics. Implications for theory and research are explored.

The prospective link between early life exposure to violence and victimization and subsequent antisocial behaviors is known as the cycle of violence. Although the cycle of violence has been linked to an array of behavioral and psychiatric outcomes, less is known about its relationship to compliance with the juvenile/criminal justice systems. Data from 813 confined delinquents selected from the California Youth Authority and the Traumatic Experiences scale from the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument Version 2 (MAYSI-2) were used to examine the cycle of violence and three forms of misconduct. After controlling for other 18 demographics, delinquent history, commitment offense type, and comorbid psychiatric symptoms that are consistent with the importation model of inmate behavior, the authors found that wards with greater exposure to early life trauma evinced more sexual misconduct, suicidal activity, and total misconduct reviewed by the parole board. Implications and discussion for future research are offered.

Purpose Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social sciences that have only recently been studied within criminology. The purpose of this paper is to utilize this framework by applying it to one of the most potentially dangerous forensic populations. Design/methodology/approach Archival data from 225 federal sex offenders was used to perform descriptive, correlational, and negative binomial regression models. Findings There was substantial evidence of ACEs including father abandonment/neglect (36 percent), physical abuse (nearly 28 percent), verbal/emotional abuse (more than 24 percent), and sexual abuse (approximately 27 percent). The mean age of sexual victimization was 7.6 years with the youngest age of victimization occurring at the age of 3. Offenders averaged nearly five paraphilias, the most common were pedophilia (57 percent), pornography addiction (43 percent), paraphilia not otherwise specified (35 percent), exhibitionism (26 percent), and voyeurism (21 percent). The offenders averaged 4.7 paraphilias and the range was substantial (0 to 19). Negative binomial regression models indicated that sexual sadism was positively and pornography addiction was negatively associated with serious criminal violence. Offenders with early age of arrest onset and more total arrest charges were more likely to perpetrate kidnaping, rape, and murder. Originality/value ACEs are common in the life history of federal sex offenders, but have differential associations with the most serious forms of crime.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the dark figure of crime among federal sex offenders from the USA to quantify crime victims and sex crime events among those with no official criminal record. Design/methodology/approach – Using data on 119 offenders selected from a five-year census of sex offenders selected from a federal probation jurisdiction in the Midwestern United States, descriptive, partial correlations, and ROC-AUC models were conducted. Findings – In total, 69 percent of offenders self-reported a contact sexual offense during polygraph examination. In total, 34 offenders had zero official record of sexual abuse but non-zero self-reported history of sexual abuse. These 34 clients offended against 148 victims that potentially denoted a minimum number of 148 sex crime events, a median number of 1,480 sex crime events, a mean number of 32,101 sex crime events, and a maximum number of 827,552 sex crime events. Total paraphilias were not predictive of self-reported sexual offending but were strongly associated with prolific self-reported sexual offending. Originality/value – The dark figure of sexual offending is enormous and the revelation of this information is facilitated by polygraph examination of federal sex offenders. Ostensibly non-contact sex offenders such as those convicted of possession of child pornography are very likely to have a history of contact sexual offending. Consistent with the containment model, polygraph examinations of the sexual history of offenders convicted of sexual offenses should be required to facilitate public safety.

Studies of the dark figure of sexual offending using federal correctional clients reported significant evidence of previously unknown or hidden sexual violence, often among clients with no official criminal history. Unfortunately, research has produced variable estimates of how large the dark figure is. The current study sought to replicate recent studies of federal sexual offenders about the dark figure of sexual offending. We also extended the knowledge base by providing additional correlational analyses to see whether self-reported and official sexual offending have shared or divergent correlates. Overall, 73.8% of federal sexual offenders reported prior contact victims, which is higher than, but generally consistent with, prior prevalence estimates of 55-69% in studies of federal correctional clients. In the current data, clients convicted of child pornography possession or receipt and who had no official record of sexual abuse nevertheless reported contact sexual offenses in more than 59% of cases. 1 | INTRODUCTION Coined by Biderman and Reiss (1967), the "dark figure of crime" is a substantive and methodological concept that describes the differences between the true amount of criminal offending that occurs in a population as assayed by validated offender self-reports compared to official estimates based on arrest reports and other criminal justice system information and victimization surveys. To be sure, self-report and official estimates of crime have an