Background: There is an ongoing debate on whether consumers of child pornography pose a risk for hands-on sex offenses. Up until now, there have been very few studies which have analyzed the association between the consumption of child pornography and the subsequent perpetration of hands-on sex offenses. The aim of this study was to examine the recidivism rates for hands-on and hands-off sex offenses in a sample of child pornography users using a 6 year follow-up design.

BackgroundIn past years, the female offender population has grown, leading to an increased interest in the characteristics of female offenders. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of female violent offending in a Swiss offender population and to compare possible socio-demographic and offense-related gender differences.MethodsDescriptive and bivariate logistic regression analyses were performed for a representative sample of N = 203 violent offenders convicted in Zurich, Switzerland.Results7.9% (N = 16) of the sample were female. Significant gender differences were found: Female offenders were more likely to be married, less educated, to have suffered from adverse childhood experiences and to be in poor mental health. Female violent offending was less heterogeneous than male violent offending, in fact there were only three types of violent offenses females were convicted for in our sample: One third were convicted of murder, one third for arson and only one woman was convicted of a sex offense.ConclusionsThe results of our study point toward a gender-specific theory of female offending, as well as toward the importance of developing models for explaining female criminal behavior, which need to be implemented in treatment plans and intervention strategies regarding female offenders.

Although generally considered as mutually exclusive, violence and sleep can coexist. Violence related to the sleep period is probably more frequent than generally assumed and can be observed in various conditions including parasomnias (such as arousal disorders and rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder), epilepsy (in particular nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy) and psychiatric diseases (including delirium and dissociative states). Important advances in the fields of genetics, neuroimaging and behavioural neurology have expanded the understanding of the mechanisms underlying violence and its particular relation to sleep. The present review outlines the different sleep disorders associated with violence and aims at providing information on diagnosis, therapy and forensic issues. It also discusses current pathophysiological models, establishing a link between sleep-related violence and violence observed in other settings.

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An actuarial risk assessment instrument can be considered valid if independent investigations using novel samples can replicate the findings of the instrument's development study. In order for a study to qualify as a replication, it has to adhere to the methodological protocol of the development study with respect to key design characteristics, as well as ensuring that manual-recommended guidelines of test administration have been followed. A systematic search was conducted to identify predictive validity studies (N = 84) on three commonly used actuarial instruments: the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG), the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG), and the Static-99. Sample (sex, age, criminal history) and design (follow-up, attrition, recidivism) characteristics, as well as markers of assessment integrity (scoring reliability, item omissions, prorating procedure), were extracted from 84 studies comprising 108 samples. None of the replications matched the development study of the instrument they were attempting to cross-validate with respect to key sample and design characteristics. Furthermore none of the replications strictly followed the manual-recommended guidelines for the instruments' administration. Additional replication studies that follow the methodological protocols outlined in actuarial instruments' development studies are needed before claims of generalizability can be made.