Assessing Protective Factors of Youth Who Sexually Offended in Singapore

Abstract

Sexual offending has attracted increasing public concern because of its long-term effects. Although there is an increasing amount of research on the risk factors for recidivism among youth who have sexually offended, there is a dearth of research on the protective factors for desistence from recidivism. The current study investigated the associations between protective factors and recidivism among 97 Singaporean youth who sexually offended (YSO). In addition, the predictive validity with regard to two new measures of protective factors—the Desistence for Adolescents Who Sexually Harm (DASH-13), and Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for Violence Risk (SAPROF)—were also evaluated. Results indicated that both the DASH-13 and the SAPROF were inversely related to the Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual Offense Recidivism (ERASOR). However, neither the DASH-13 nor the SAPROF were found to have adequate predictive validity or incremental validity for sexual or nonsexual recidivism. The implications for the assessment and management of YSO are discussed.

Violent and Nonviolent Youth Offenders

“…No differences were observed for sexual reoffending (like what was found for comparisons between these two groups and nonviolent youth), which is not surprising, given the overall low base rate of sexual reoffending in this sample. Furthermore, low rates of sexual reoffending have been found among Singaporean youth offenders, even for youth who have sexually offended ( Zeng, Chu, & Lee, 2015 ). Violent-plus youth were also more likely to have history of delinquent behavior (i.e., running away), history of aggression (i.e., bullying), and be involved in gangs.…”

An Exploratory Study of Recidivism Risk Assessment Instruments for Individuals Convicted of Sexual Offenses in Singapore

“…The new instrument was predictive of sexual recidivism at 3 years, but not at 7 years (area under the curve [AUC] = .76) of a sample of 421 adults who have sexually offended. Moreover, protective factors on their own did not have either predictive validity or incremental validity effect when used with the Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual Offense Recidivism (ERASOR; Zeng et al, 2015).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, only one published Asian study validated risk assessment instruments specifically on adult sexual offenders ( Lin & Dong, 2005 ) and two published articles on risk assessment for youths who sexually offended ( Chu, Ng, Fong, & Teoh, 2012 ; Zeng, Chu, & Lee, 2015 ). In Taiwan, Lin and Dong (2005) preselected items from the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism (RRASOR), Static-99, and Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool—Revised (MnSOST-R) that were predictive of sexual recidivism and came up with an adapted risk assessment instrument, called Taiwan Sex Offender Static Risk Assessment Scale (TSOSRAS).…”

Protective Factors in Violence Risk Assessment: Predictive Validity of the SAPROF and HCR-20V3

“…In the only study to examine the effect of change in the presence of SAPROF protective factors over time, an increase in protective factors following inpatient treatment was found to be associated with an absence of violence in the community in a sample of male forensic psychiatric patients (de Vries Robbé, de Vogel, Douglas, & Nijman, 2015). Other studies focusing on adolescent populations and sexual offending (Klein, Rettenberger, Yoon, Köhler, & Briken, 2015;Zeng, Chu, & Lee, 2015) found no consistent relationship between protective factors and violence although they used the adult, rather than the subsequently published adolescent version (de Vries Robbé, Geers, Stapel, Hilterman, & de Vogel, 2015). Perhaps most notably, many studies exploring the validity of the SAPROF have been conducted by the tool's authors, and may therefore be susceptible to authorship bias (Singh, Grann, & Fazel, 2013).…”

“…The SAPROF has been shown to correlate with protective factors assessed in other SPJ risk assessment tools (Abidin et al, 2013;Klein et al, 2015). Interrater reliability is generally good and for the total SAPROF score ranges from ICC = .65 (Zeng et al, 2015) to .92 (Klein et al, 2015 (Douglas, Hart, et al, 2013, p. 36). Incidents of violence were extracted from an existing electronic database used by staff to record all adverse incidents within the hospital; staff are required to record all adverse incidents immediately, select a category of incident based on clearly defined criteria, and provide detailed descriptions of the events.…”