Investigating the Continuity of Sex Offending: Evidence from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort

Abstract

This study uses data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort to examine the natural history of sex offenders and their involvement in sexual offending through age 26. Several key findings emerged from our effort. First, only one in 10 of the 221 mate and female juvenile sex offenders had a sex-related offense during the first eight years of adulthood. Second, 92 percent of all the cohort mates with adult sex records had no prior juvenile sex offense. Third, a boy with no sex contacts but five or more total juvenile police contacts was more than twice as likely to commit a sex crime as an adult as a juvenile sex offender with fewer than five total police contacts. Fourth, multinomial logistic regression results demonstrated that being a juvenile sex offender did not significantly increase the likelihood for an individual being an adult sex offender, nor did the frequency of juvenile sex offending. In short, the assumptions underpinning current registration and notification taws are fraught with problems and should be reconsidered .

New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000–2011: A state-of-the-art review

“…Its course reflects the variation that exists among the criminal population in terms of offending rate or frequency-oftentimes denoted by the Greek lambda (λ) (Blumstein, Cohen, Piquero, & Visher, 2010;Brame, Paternoster, & Bushway, 2004;Francis et al, 2004;Hochstetler, DeLisi, & Puhrmann, 2007;Lattimore et al, 2004;Miles & Ludwig, 2007;Monahan & Piquero, 2009;Odgers et al, 2008;Paternoster, Brame, & Farrington, 2001;Piquero, 2000a;Pollock, Joo, & Lawton, 2010;Ramoutar & Farrington, 2006), persistence/continuity (Blokland, Nagin, & Nieuwbeerta, 2005;Brame, Bushway, Paternoster, & Thornberry, 2005;Ewart, Oatley, & Burn, 2005;Ge, Donnellan, & Wenk, 2001;Mazerolle et al, 2000;Zimring, Jennings, Piquero, & Hays, 2009), and career length or span (Francis, Soothill, & Piquero, 2007;Haapanen, Britton, & Croisdale, 2007;Kazemian & Farrington, 2006;Kazemian, Le Blanc, Farrington, & Pease, 2007;Piquero, Brame, & Lynam, 2004;Piquero & Buka, 2002). Whereas most offending careers are brief, truncated, and intermittent (Piquero, 2004), some are prolonged and essentially life-long.…”

“…Beginning with the seminal Philadelphia Birth Cohort Studies (Wolfgang et al, 1972;Tracy et al, 1990), the two-volume study by Zimring, Jennings, Piquero, & Hays, 2009), and even police officers (Harris, 2010).…”

Bootstrapping persistence risk indicators for juveniles who sexually offend

“…Whereas several studies have found a relation between a history of nonsexual offenses and sexual recidivism (Allan, Allan, Marshall, & Kraszlan, 2003;Caldwell, 2007;McCann & Lussier, 2008;Nisbet et al, 2004), and others have found a relation between sexual recidivism and a history of impulsivity, psychopathy, antisocial personality characteristics, and truancy (Caldwell et al, 2008;Gretton, McBride, Hare, O'Shaughnessy, & Kumka, 2001;Schram, Milloy, & Rowe, 1991;Worling, 2001), a number of studies (Kahn & Chambers, 1991;Lab, Shields, & Schondel, 1993;Långströ m, 2002;Rasmussen, 1999;Sipe et al, 1998;Worling & Curwen, 2000) have failed to find a relation between nonsexual offending and sexual recidivism. Nonetheless, some evidence suggests that antisociality may play a role in predicting persistence of sexually coercive behavior into adulthood (Parks & Bard, 2006;Zimring et al, 2009Zimring et al, , 2007. Consistent with the pattern of these results, Worling and Långströ m (2006) have listed antisocial interpersonal orientation and impulsivity as only possible risk factors for sexual recidivism.…”

“…In more recent meta-analyses of predictive factors for JSOs (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2004;McCann & Lussier, 2008) and reviews of sexual recidivism (Worling & Långström, 2006), sexualization as indexed by previous sexual charges/convictions and deviant sexual interests has been shown to have moderate predictive potency, but the efficacy of this component in predicting persistence into adulthood has had mixed support (e.g., Parks & Bard, 2006;Rubinstein et al, 1993;Sample & Bray, 2003;Zimring et al, 2009Zimring et al, , 2007. Moreover, the specific measure of this sexualization component in the JSOAP-II Factor 1 has yielded mixed results (e.g., Prentky, 2006;Viljoen et al, 2008).…”

“…Indeed, with one exception (Rubinstein, Yeager, Goodstein, & Lewis, 1993), previous studies agree that a low percentage of JSOs continue their sexual offending into adulthood (e.g., Day, Bevc, Theodor, Rosenthal, & Duchesne, 2008;Nisbet, Wilson, & Smallbone, 2004;Parks & Bard, 2006;Zimring, Jennings, Piquero, & Hays, 2009). Moreover, there is little overlap on the variables that have been found to be related to this continuance (see, e.g., Parks & Bard, 2006;Sample & Bray, 2003;Rubinstein et al, 1993;Sipe, Jensen, & Everett, 1998;Vandiver, 2006;Zimring et al, 2009;Zimring, Piquero, & Jennings, 2007). These findings seem to contrast with the decisions that are often made about the placement or adjudication of juveniles who sexually offend.…”