Sexual Predators and Social Policy

Abstract

"Sexual predator" is used in the media and in legislation to describe the most dangerous sex offenders. Efforts to reduce the risk they pose to society have intensified. States have enacted post-criminal-sentence civil commitment statutes and registration and notification laws that provide for identification of convicted sex offenders living in the community. Social policies concerning sexual predators could be improved through consideration of empirical research on violent and sexual offenders. Actuarial methods can predict which offenders will commit new violent or sexual offenses with a level of accuracy that is useful to policy makers. Community safety is better served by focusing on offenders' dangerousness rather than on their mental disorder. Separation of sexual from violent offending makes it more difficult to identify the most dangerous offenders because sex crimes have a lower probability of occurrence than the combined probability of violent or sex crimes, and both are of public concern.