Are Sex Offenders Dangerous?*

Abstract

Research Summary:Current legislation mandating DNA collection, civil commitment, registration, and community notification of sex offenders is predicated on the assumption that sex offenders are simply more dangerous than other types of offenders in that they inevitably re‐offend. Moreover, many states are moving to expand sex offender legislation to include non‐sexual offenders on the assumption that some offense types, such as burglary and robbery, serve as “gateway” offenses to sex crimes. The purpose of this research is to highlight two of the common perceptions underlying sex offender laws, and the extension thereof, and examine them in light of current empirical evidence. We employ analysis of variance techniques on Illinois arrest data from 1990 to 1997 to examine the degree to which sex offenders have higher proportions of repeat offending than other criminal categories and if some offense types serve as “gateway” or predicate offenses to sex crimes.Policy Implications:Our results suggest that the extension of sex offender laws to non‐sexual offenders will likely have little effect on sexual victimization rates. More importantly, our results illustrate that policies can be founded on misconceptions, and these misconceptions not only have financial consequences, but also can affect the likelihood that the policies enacted will achieve their goals. If nothing else, this research suggests that policy makers need to become better informed on the issues they subject to far‐reaching and costly legislation.

Beyond sexual recidivism: A review of the sexual criminal career parameters of adult sex offenders

“…For example, in the study by Langan, Schmitt, and Durose (2003), using a three-year follow-up of close to 270,000 prisoners, 5% of adult sex offenders were re-arrested for a sex crime compared to 1% of non-sex offenders. Similar numbers were reported by Sample and Bray (2003). However, these results do not take into account the fact that the recidivism rates significantly vary across types of sex offenders.…”

“…Not surprisingly, therefore, several dimensions of the criminal careers of sex offenders have escaped empirical scrutiny. Of importance, patterns of escalation and de-escalation in sex offending have been largely overlooked (e.g., Leclerc, Lussier, & Deslauriers-Varin, in press;Sample & Bray, 2003).…”

Female sex offenders: Specialists, generalists and once-only offenders

“…They differ in the extent to which their careers are characterised by specialisation (committing offences of the same type) or generality (committing offences of different types) (Guerette, Stenius, & McGloin, 2005;Mazerolle, Brame, Paternoster, Piquero, & Dean, 2000;Piquero, 2000). Sex offenders tend to specialise more than other offenders, as they relatively frequently re-offend sexually when compared with non-sex offenders (Hanson, Scott, & Steffy, 1995;Langan, Schmitt, & Durose, 2003;Sample & Bray, 2003). Some sex offenders specialise more than others (Harris, Smallbone, Dennison, & Knight, 2009;Lussier, 2005;Miethe, Olson, & Mitchell, 2006;Soothill, Francis, Sanderson, & Ackerley, 2000): child abusers, for instance, tend to specialise more than sex offenders with an older or adult victim (Knight & Prentky, 1993;Knight & Sims-Knight, 2003).…”

The Criminal Activity of Sexual Offenders in Adulthood: Revisiting the Specialization Debate

“…These legislative changes were accompanied by measures attempting to reinforce formal and informal social control against sexual offenders, such as the "Registration and Community Notification Laws" (Simon, 1998). These specific measures taken by the criminal justice system were based on the assumption that individuals having committed a sexual offence tend to specialize in sexual crimes.This assumption was recently challenged by criminologists arguing that sexual offenders do not restrict themselves to sexual crimes, their offending behavior being characterized by much generality (Sample & Bray, 2003;Simon, 1997Simon, , 2000Smallbone, Wheaton, & Hourigan, 2003). Many studies were conducted in order to verify the specialization and generality hypotheses.…”

“…Therefore, the recidivism rate of sexual offenders was about four times higher than that of nonsexual offenders. In a similar fashion, Sample and Bray (2003) examined the recidivism rate of a large sample of individuals (n = 146,918) who were arrested between 1990 and 1997. The sexual recidivism rate for a follow-up period of 5 years was about 6% for sexual offenders, whereas it varied between 0 and 3% for nonsexual offenders.…”