Categories Of Offenders Research Articles

Youth Who Sexual Offended

There has been an increased focus on understanding youth sexual offending in recent years, but there has been limited empirical research on the causes, pathways, and treatment of youth who have sexually offended—especially within a non-Western context. The Good Lives and Self-Regulation Models have often been used to understand and rehabilitate adult sexual offenders, but (unfortunately) there is scant research on youth who sexually offended using these models. The present study aims to describe the different primary goods that are associated with youth sexual offending behaviors in an Asian context. In addition, the study sought to explore whether the age of victim (child vs. nonchild) and nature of sexual offense (penetrative vs. nonpenetrative) influenced the youth’s engagement in offense pathways. The results suggest that pleasure, relatedness, and inner peace were the primary human goods that were most sought after by a sample of 168 youth who sexually offended in Singapore. In addition, offender classification (in relation to the age of victim and nature of sexual offense) influenced the pathways to sexual offending. Therefore, these findings have important clinical implications for assessment, management, and intervention planning for youth who sexually offended.

Прекршајна одговорност у праву Републике Србије

As a particular branch of penal law, administrative law of the Republic of Serbia comprises a series of specific and original solutions regarding the definitions of administrative offences and responsibility for administrative offences. This seems logical because administrative offences may be committed by various categories of offenders: juveniles, adults, responsible persons in legal persons and entrepreneurs, who are responsible in accordance with the principles of personal responsibility, but also by a legal person, liability of which is based upon objective responsibility. Numerous terms related to the definition, elements, types, roles and characteristics of responsibility for administrative offences, as well as for the grounds that exclude this type of responsibility in cases prescribed by the law, will be discussed and analyzed in this paper.

Characterization and Prediction of Sexual and Nonsexual Recidivism Among Adjudicated Juvenile Sex Offenders

Estimating the risk of sexual recidivism for a juvenile sex offender is essential in order to protect public safety by identifying and evaluating high risk adolescents and to ensure the rights and welfare of juvenile offenders who will not likely reoffend. Empirically validated risk assessment methods are needed to aid in the classification and treatment of juvenile sex offenders. The present study utilized a dataset collected by Maricopa County, AZ, and aggregated by the National Juvenile Court Data Archive. The purpose of the study was to evaluate and characterize risk factors for juveniles who have been charged with a sexual offense in order to determine the predictive utility of these factors for subsequent offending, as well as offense trajectory, and to evaluate risk factors for nonsexual offenders who have committed crimes of various severities. The results of the present study show the strongest individual predictors of sexual recidivism to be prior nonsexual offending, prior sexual offending, hands-off offending, offending against a child, younger school grade/age at time of initial offense, Asian or Hispanic ethnicity, and not attending school. A preliminary screening measure was developed from the seven positive risk factors, and ROC analysis produced an AUC indicating moderate predictive utility in discriminating between juvenile sex offenders who would sexually reoffend and those who would not.

Testing Existing Classifications of Serial Murder Considering Gender: An Exploratory Analysis of Solo Female Serial Murderers

AbstractSerial murder is a genre of crime that has received a great deal of media and academic attention, yet, serial murder committed by women has only begun to garner a portion of this attention within the last 15 years. This study examines the reliability of Kelleher and Kelleher's classification rubric, the only classification system developed for female serial murderers, as well as considering Hickey's classification of serial offenders by location. Other variables associated with homicide research have also been examined to determine their roles in both these crimes and classifying offenders. The current research will demonstrate that offender motivation is not an ideal basis for the classification of female serial murderers, who tend to defy simple or singular classification within existing typologies. The other variables analysed indicate that victim–offender relationship and victim approach are important to understanding these female offenders and their crimes, as well as the possible development of more accurate classification systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Offenders with mental health problems and substance misuse: cluster analysis based on the Addiction Severity Index version 6 (ASI-6)

There is an urgent need to improve assessment and treatment among offenders with mental health problems and substance misuse (the “triply troubled”). An examination of the usefulness of the recently published Addiction Severity Index version 6 (ASI-6; Cacciola, J.S., Alterman, A.I., Habing, B., & McLellan, A.T. (2011). Recent status scores for version 6 of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI-6). Addiction, 106, 1588–1602) in classifying offenders with mental health problems and substance misuse was undertaken. A total of 207 offenders with suspect mental disorder and substance misuse about to go through a forensic psychiatric evaluation in Sweden were interviewed with the ASI-6. Data were cluster analyzed. Four distinct clusters emerged: (1) “less troubled” (n = 35), (2) “severely triply troubled” (n = 30), (3) “triply troubled with medical problems (n = 52) and (4) “working triply troubled” (n = 87). The ASI-6 proved useful in the classification of offenders with mental health problems and substance misuse...

Sex Fiends, Perverts, and Pedophiles: Understanding Sex Crime Policy in America. By Chrysanthi Leon. New York: New York University Press, 2011. 444 pp. $70.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

Sex Fiends, Perverts, and Pedophiles: Understanding Sex Crime Policy in America. By Chrysanthi Leon. New York: New York University Press, 2011. 444 pp. $70.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.At the crux of the current crisis of mass incarceration, increasing punitiveness, and alarmist politics, is the heated controversy about sex offender policy. Current policies create the impression that sex offender policy has always consisted of lengthy, incapacitating sentences and pervasive post-sentence supervision; moreover, many previous studies have focused on the punitive discourse surrounding sex offenders, thus blurring the line between perceptions and representations of the problem and the methods adopted to address it.Chrysanthi Leon's new book is a welcome and knowledgeable addition to this debate. The book thoroughly analyzes sex offender policy, challenging the existing academic and practical discourse in two important ways. First, it offers a much-needed historical perspective, breaking the timeline into roughly three periods: the sexual psychopath era, featuring a plethora of approaches toward sexual offenses; the rehabilitative era, during which the belief that propensity to commit sex offenses was curable led to a focus on clinical approaches; and the modern containment era, in which mass incarceration and numerous restrictions are related to a belief in incurability. In doing so, the book reveals nuance and layers that existing scholarship tends to mask and compress.Second, the book analyzes both discourse and policy, drawing on an astounding variety of sources, including interviews with practitioners, field observations, quantitative databases of arrest, conviction and civil commitment rates, academic sources, newspapers, and popular culture. In doing so, it provides a more complete perspective on the relationship between academic opinions, political initiatives, professional practices, and public discourse and perceptions.The conclusions Leon draws from this extensive inquiry are nuanced and sophisticated. The most noticeable trend is a unification of the sex offender category. While the sexual psychopath era and the rehabilitation era (to a lesser extent) feature efforts to distinguish sex offenders from each other, in the containment era sex offenders are perceived as a monolithic category of monsters. This trend has disturbing, and sometimes surprising, implications: Our ability to properly assess risk is hindered by our perception of propensity to offend as static and unchanging, therefore leading to an overbroad category of monitored and controlled sex offenders, but simultaneously diverting our attention away from sexual offenses committed within the family.Leon also problematizes the usual explanations for sex offender incarceration, which focus on moral panics and regard sex offenders as a unique category of subjects, separate from general criminal justice trend. Instead, she offers an integrated explanation that sees sex offender incarceration as part of the general trend toward more frequent and more severe incarceration. …

Apego adulto en agresores de pareja = Adult attachment in partner-violent men

The influence of emotional and affective regulation goes beyond family and romantic relationships and influences our aggressive behavior. In the research on interpersonal violence, one of the most complex variables to analyze is adult attachment. The international research has linked attachment styles with functional or dysfunctional anger expression, domestic and intimate partner violence, and criminal behavior. The aim of this paper is to review the existing research on adult attachment styles and their relationship with intimate partner violence. The value of the variable in the typological classification of offenders, the implications for therapeutic interventions and the limitations in its assessment are discussed. Since it is a variable whose study in Spain still must be developed some future research lines are proposed.

Graffiti Offenders' Patterns of Desistance from, and Persistence in, Crime: New Insights into Reducing Recidivist Offending

While graffiti is a gateway crime towards more serious criminal offending, little is known about graffitists’ patterns of desistance from, and persistence in, crime. This paper addresses this knowledge shortfall through an examination of the Western Australian Police Information Management System (IMS) database for three age-groups (i.e. preteens, adolescents, adults) and three categories of graffiti offenders (Early Desisters, Limited Persisters, Chronic Persisters). Descriptive and chi-squared statistics reveal that: i) nearly three-quarters of all of the 667 preteen, adolescent and adult graffiti offenders desisted from further offending after their first or second contact with police; ii) the mainly adolescent cohort of Limited Persister offenders account for the majority of all recorded violent crime; and c) most graffiti offenders are processed through the court system for both their graffiti and non-graffitirelated offences. The implications for designing recidivist intervention programmes that target offenders at the different stages of their offending are discussed.

Offender Assessment, Diagnosis, and Classification

Offender Assessment, Diagnosis, and Classification

Why criminal behavior of chronic delinquents could be even strengthen after forensic treatment?

The efforts of the formal system of government to achieve social reintegration of chronic offenders is reflected, inter alia, through the application of a large number of educational and training retrain and therapeutic treatment in penal institutions. However, they still do not give the desired results. So, in this paper we analyze the results of studies that investigate effects of various forms of forensic treatment on the criminal re-offend. It was found that, in this context, it is important to determine whether the offender has a psychological predisposition toward antisocial behaviour, and whether deviations are present which do not have the character of mental illness, but have the impact on stubbornly chronically maintaining delinquency. Based on the results of empirical data from the relevant studies and practical experiences of forensic therapeutic experts, it was found that some forms of treatment, including training for development social skills, life skills, and empathy, for certain categories of violent offenders, not only does not lead to the expected reduction of violence, but even at first glance, paradoxical result, as many as five times more frequent criminal recovery, compared to the same category of offenders who are not covered by treatment. When this tendency is particularly worrying that in these cases the victims are subjected to insidious attacks against and become more vulnerable because they are representatives of the criminal justice system misled the attackers to make treatment safer. The paper points out the possible reasons for such negative outcomes of treatment and is located contraindicated category form of forensic psychotherapy to the riskiest psychological profile. It was estimated that the usual methods of psychotherapy and mental needs advisory applied in clinical trials in patients unsuitable for delinquent population. It was concluded that any rehabilitation treatment must be designed in accordance with psychological characteristics of the target group and each individual delinquents. Beside that, it is necessary to ensure the continued education of representatives of the judiciary in this area, as order to prevent damage due to indiscriminate referral of offenders to treatment contraindicated.

Młodociani w świetle prawa i badań kryminologicznych

The article discusses the problem of young adult offenders in the light of provisions of current Polish criminal law and of criminological studies on this category of convicts over the years. Polish criminal code of 1997 in the article 115 paragraph 10 defines a young adult offender as a person 21 years old who commits a crime or a person under 24 years who is tried in a court of first instance. Two basic issues are involved in the notion of a young adult offender. First the age limits of the subject, second the character of penal measures to be used towards this particular category of offenders. Both issues are discussed at length in the article, particularly with respect to the fact that criminal law makes use of scientific findings from sociology, psychology and medicine to create normative regulations concerning conditions of liability of young adult offenders for their unlawful acts. As an example, one may discuss particular normative directives of the sentence provided for a young adult offenders as the court is obliged to, most of all, educate and resocialise. Educational and resocialisation aspect of the punishment does not mean that young adult offender are treated leniently, sometimes it may indicate a longer time of resocialisation and, at the same time, a longer imprisonment sentence to execute this objective . While sentencing a young adult offender, the court should decide in such a manner so that the liability of the accused is directed more into educational model than repressive one, yet this does not denote resignation from administering the penalty of unconditional imprisonment. Still, it needs to be admitted that in the Polish legal system there are few concrete provisions of law which define in detail how a young offenders should be treated which, according to the author, is somehow concerning. There are significant differences in criminal execution law. First, as a rule, young adult offenders should be imprisoned separately from adult ones. This is understandable because of susceptibility of young people to influence and pressure from adults. Moreover, young adult offenders are subject to system of programmed educational and resocialisation measures during imprisonment, which on one hand seems right, on the other evokes a series of questions and reservations. Discussion of normative situation of young adult offender are illustrated with selected criminological studies carried out so far concerning this category of offenders. Reported results of research show that young adult offenders have typical features characteristic for the whole group. Information on dysfunctional families and alcohol problems are always present. It is accompanied by low education level of their parents and their unemployment. Problems in the behavior of such offenders appear already in kindergarten age and increase during school education while the education process itself leaves a lot to be desired.

Recidivism in subgroups of serious juvenile offenders: Different profiles, different risks?

Research has shown that the treatment of juvenile offenders is most effective when it takes into account the possible risk factors for re-offending. It may be asked whether juvenile offenders can be treated as one homogeneous group, or, if they are divisible into subgroups, whether different risk factors are predictive of recidivism. AIMS AND HYPOTHESES: Our aims were to find out whether serious juvenile offenders may be subdivided into clearly defined subgroups and whether such subgroups might differ in terms of the risk factors that predict recidivism. In a sample of 1111 serious juvenile offenders, latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups. For each juvenile offender, 70 risk factors were registered. Severity of recidivism was measured on a 12-point scale. Analysis was then conducted to identify the risk factors that best predicted the different patterns of recidivism. Four distinct subgroups of juvenile offenders were identified: serious violent offenders, violent property offenders, property offenders, and sex offenders. Violent property offenders were the most serious recidivists and had the highest number of risk factors. Serious violent offenders and property offenders were characterised by overt and covert behaviour, respectively. Sex offenders differed from the other three groups in the rarity of their recidivism and in the risk factors that are present. For each of these four subgroups, a different set of risk factors was found to predict severity of recidivism. Differences in recidivism rates occurred in spite of the fact that most of these youngsters had been in the standard treatment programme offered to serious juvenile offenders in the Netherlands. This was not a treatment outcome study, but the indication that two of the groups identified in our study appeared to be worse after going through this programme, whereas the other two did quite well in terms of recidivism lends weight to our idea that such classification of juvenile offenders may lead to more targeted treatment programmes that would better serve both the general public and the youths concerned.

Leadership in Multiple Perpetrator Stranger Rape

Sexual offences by multiple perpetrators are more violent and involve more severe forms of sexual violation than those perpetrated by a lone offender. Often a clear leader exists within these groups. Questions have been raised as to the relative risk of reoffending and the potentially differing criminogenic needs of leaders and followers. However, a recent study comparing leaders and followers in juvenile multiple perpetrator rapes (t'Hart-Kerkhoffs et al., 2011) failed to find some of the expected differences. It was proposed that this might be due, in part, to the way leaders and followers were classified in the study. Before work can progress in this area, it is important to devise reliable and valid means of identifying leaders and followers in multiple perpetrator rape. This article reports on a study which investigated the utility of two different methods of identifying leadership. The Scale of Influence (Porter & Alison, 2001) was applied to a sample of 256 offenders responsible for 95 multiple perpetrator rapes from the United Kingdom. Following this, the relative number of directives uttered by offenders was used to designate leadership. In 66% of the offences sampled, a leader was designated using the number of directives uttered compared with 80% when using the Scale of Influence. When combining both measures to form a composite measure of leadership, this percentage increased to 89%. Classifications of offenders as leaders, followers, and neither, according to the Scale of Influence, the count of directives, and the composite measure, were compared with classifications made by a practitioner to assess their concordance. The composite measure showed the greatest agreement with practitioner opinion. These findings suggest that the Scale of Influence could be developed to take account of other ways that leadership is displayed during multiple perpetrator rapes.

Impression Formation or Prediction? Category Fit and Task Influence Forensic Person Memory

We experimentally investigated whether forensic psychologists differ from laymen in their use of heuristic and integrated information processing depending on the given task and category fit of information. Participants' task was either forming an impression or predicting the development of a fictitious rapist and a fictitious robber-and-murderer. Case report recall was measured. Results showed that experts processed the rapist's information heuristically when offender information fit the category and the task required impression formation. In contrast, laymen did not apply the offender categories and processed all the information using an integrated strategy. When predicting the development of an offender, forensic psychologists integrated all relevant information. The robber-and-murderer information was always processed using an integrated strategy. The practical relevance of the results is discussed.

The three dimensions of online child pornography offending

The internet has opened up opportunities for non-contact sex offending, such as the viewing of child pornography. This paper proposes a model for the classification of child pornography offenders as an aid for their assessment and treatment, deducted from empirical studies and existing typologies for child pornography offenders. Different subgroups of child pornography offenders may be described according to three dimensions: (1) type of offending, (2) the motivation behind child pornography offending and (3) the situational and social engagement in the offending behaviour. Distinct pathways of child pornography offending can be identified, related to differing criminogenic needs, severity of offending, and appropriate assessment and treatment strategies for the offenders.

Risk and revocation in community corrections: The role of gender

Actuarial risk assessment instruments have become integral to the functioning of the correctional systems in North America, the United Kingdom, and many other parts of the world. While research on the classification of female offenders has been ongoing since the 1980s, there is still more work to be done. Adding to the growing body of literature, the present study analyses agency records from a Community Supervision Department located in a Southwestern state in the United States. Findings reveal the Wisconsin Risk/Needs Assessment instrument has predictive validity for both male and female probationers. Further, successful completion rates for males and females are found to be similar.

Life Without Parole and the Hope for Real Sentencing Reform

In this chapter for a book that asks whether life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is the penalty, I will explore some reasons why it is unlikely LWOP will experience the same procedural and substantive oversight that now exists for the penalty. The chapter begins by highlighting the problem of defining LWOP in a way that will lead to meaningful reforms. If the concern with LWOP sentences is, as the Supreme Court recently suggested in Graham, that they eliminate the realistic hope of release, then other sentences – such as natural life sentences where parole is just as unlikely as executive clemency of an LWOP sentence or long term-of-years sentences – would seem to be equivalent. But once one recognizes that these other sentences are comparable, problems of administrability and line-drawing pose enormous obstacles to both judicial and legislative reform efforts. The next hurdle is the puzzling question of how one should limit LWOP, assuming one can define it. Although some reformers would favor outright abolition, that is exceedingly unlikely given current Supreme Court attitudes about punishment review and American politics more generally. Thus, the question becomes who should be eligible for LWOP and which categories of offenses and offenders will create enough public sympathy to generate favorable judicial decisions or legislative reform efforts. Outside of juveniles, the pool of candidates is shallow. After addressing these substantive questions of scope, the chapter turns to the likelihood of procedural reforms and explains why LWOP sentences are unlikely to get the same procedural protections as capital cases. The sheer number of such cases is the largest obstacle, but the line-drawing problems are also likely to deter courts and legislators. The Chapter also discusses an additional significant political obstacle to LWOP reform: the capital abolition movement itself. Anti-death advocates have incentives to prevent LWOP from becoming the new penalty in order to abolish the old penalty and keep it from coming back. The success of abolition campaigns against capital punishment have depended heavily on the existence of LWOP, and it is unlikely that most abolitionists will join the battle to reform LWOP unless and until the is off the table as an option – and with no risk of return. Finally, the Chapter concludes with a note of caution about focusing too much on what makes LWOP a unique punishment – the path paved by the Court’s death is different jurisprudence – as opposed to emphasizing the troublesome aspects it shares with other sentences. While a majority of the Supreme Court seems to view the extinction of hope as the main problem with LWOP, that concern is in many ways a distraction. The bigger problem with LWOP is that in too many cases it is a disproportionate punishment relative to the offense or the offender. But a concern with disproportionate sentencing is hardly limited to LWOP sentences. Any term of years or sentence with or without parole can be disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment. The Court created a “death is different” jurisprudence to avoid facing the hard question of disproportionality outside the capital context. It appears to be on the road to doing the same thing with LWOP. That may be the easier path for the Court’s docket and judicial management more generally, but it falls short of fulfilling the Constitution’s mandate.

Post-release controls for sex offenders in the U.S. and UK

In recent years, both the United States and United Kingdom have developed numerous innovations in legal efforts to protect society from sex offenders. Each country has adopted special provisions for sex offenders. In particular, governments have focused on forms of social control after release from incarceration and probation. These policy innovations for this category of offenders have been more far reaching than those for any other offender population. The two jurisdictions have adopted policies with similar goals, but the selected strategies have important differences. Generally speaking, the U.S. has favored an ever-expanding set of policies that place sex offenders into broad categories, with few opportunities that distinguish the appropriate responses for individual offenders. The UK government observed the proliferation of Megan's Laws 1 1 Named after Megan Kanka, a young girl sexually assaulted and murdered by a known sex offender. For further information on Megan's Law, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan's_Law, accessed September 21, 2010. in the U.S., and deliberately chose to establish carefully controlled releases of information, primarily relying on governmental agencies to work in multi-disciplinary groups and make case-specific decisions about individual offenders. Although the UK policy leaders expressed significant concern that the public's response to knowing about identified sex offenders living in the community would result in vigilantism, to date the results have not borne out this fear. Both governments have turned to other crime control measures such as polygraphy testing, electronic monitoring, and civil protection orders as a means to prevent further sexual violence.

Analyzing Offense Patterns as a Function of Mental Illness to Test the Criminalization Hypothesis

Analyzing Offense Patterns as a Function of Mental Illness to Test the Criminalization Hypothesis

Postrelease Specialization and Versatility in Sexual Offenders Referred for Civil Commitment

Offense specialization and versatility has been explored previously in the prior criminal records of sexual offenders. The present study expanded these findings by examining offense specialization and versatility in the postrelease offending of a sample of sexual offenders referred for civil commitment and released. Criminal versatility (not limiting one's offending to sexual crime) both before and after commitment was the most commonly observed offending pattern in the sample. Specialist offenders (those for whom sexual offenses constituted more than half of their total number of previous arrests) were more likely than versatile offenders to specialize in sexual offending on release, perhaps indicating that specialization is a stable offending tendency. When compared by referral status, recidivism records indicated that offenders who were committed for treatment were more likely than observed, noncommitted offenders to specialize in sexual offending on release. When compared by offender classification, child molesters and offenders with mixed aged victims were much more likely than rapists and incest offenders to specialize in sexual offending on release.