Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T03:34:18.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Predictors of risk in serious sex offenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Don Grubin
Don Grubin*
Affiliation:
St Nicholas Hospital, Jubilee Road, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne & Wear NE3 3XT
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

With the exception of a very few prolific offenders, sex offending is not a high rate activity. Even recidivist offenders will commit only a small number of offences in their careers, and these may be separated by intervals of years. Because of this, anyone setting out to predict reoffending by sex offenders will do best if they simply assume that none will reoffend, in which case they will be right more often than not. But such an approach, of course, would be criticised for being oversimplistic. Sex offenders have a history, and there is a common belief that if we know enough about an individual's past we should be able to predict his future with great accuracy. This has led some workers to claim that if the right variables can be discovered and plugged into a risk assessment algorithm, then the resulting desktop prediction of risk will outperform any competing clinical method.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 170 , Issue S32: Assessing risk in the mentally disordered , April 1997 , pp. 17 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

References

Boss, M. (1949) Meaning and Content of Sexual Perversions. New York: Grune & Stratton.Google Scholar
Brittain, R. P. (1970) The sadistic murderer. Medicine, Science and the Law, 10, 198–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgess, A.W., Hartman, C. R., Ressler, R. K., et al (1986) Sexual homicide: a motivational model. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 1, 251–272.Google Scholar
Dietz, P. E., Hazelwood, M. S. & Warren, D. S.W. (1990) The sexually sadistic criminal and his offences. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 16, 163–178.Google Scholar
Grubin, D. (1994) Sexual murder. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 624–629.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grubin, D. & Gunn, J. (1991) The Imprisoned Rapist and Rape. London: British Home Office.Google Scholar
Hanson, R. K. (1997) Assessing sexual offenders’ capacity for empathy. Psychology Crime and Law (in press).Google Scholar
Hanson, R. K. & Scott, H. (1995) Assessing perspective-taking among sexual offenders, nonsexual criminals, and nonoffenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 7, 259–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacCulloch, M. J., Snowden, P. R., Wood, P. J. W., et al (1983) Sadistic fantasy, sadistic behaviour and offending. British Journal of Psychiatry, 143, 20–29.Google Scholar
Marshall, P. (1994) Reconviction of imprisoned sexual offenders. Home Office Research and Statistics Department: Research Bulletin, 36, 23–29.Google Scholar
Prentky, R. A., Burgess, A.W., Rodous, F., et al (1989) The presumptive role of fantasy in serial sexual homicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 887–891.Google ScholarPubMed
Quinsey, V. L., Rice, M. E. & Harris, G.T. (1995) Actuarial prediction of sexual recidivism. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 10, 85–103.Google Scholar
Thornton, D. & Travers, R. (1991) A longitudinal study of the criminal behaviour of convicted sexual offenders. Proceedings of the Prison Psychologists’ Conference, HM Prison Service.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.