CSOM: Recidivism of Sex Offenders

May 2001:

Introduction:
The criminal justice system manages most convicted sex offenders with some combination of incarceration, community supervision, and specialized treatment (Knopp, Freeman-Longo, and Stevenson, 1992). While the likelihood and length of incarceration for sex offenders has increased in recent years,1 the majority are released at some point on probation or parole (either immediately following sentencing or after a period of incarceration in prison or jail). About 60 percent of all sex offenders managed by the U.S. correctional system are under some form of conditional supervision in the community (Greenfeld, 1997).

While any offender’s subsequent reoffending is of public concern, the prevention of sexual violence is particularly important, given the irrefutable harm that these offenses cause victims and the fear they generate in the community. With this in mind, practitioners making decisions about how to manage sex offenders must ask themselves the following questions:

• What is the likelihood that a specific offender will commit subsequent sex crimes?
• Under what circumstances is this offender least likely to reoffend?
• What can be done to reduce the likelihood of reoffense?

The study of recidivism—the commission of a subsequent offense—is important to the criminal justice response to sexual offending. If sex offenders commit a wide variety of offenses, responses from both a public policy and treatment perspective may be no different than is appropriate for the general criminal population (Quinsey, 1984). However, a more specialized response is appropriate if sex offenders tend to commit principally sex offenses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical issues in defining recidivism and provide a synthesis of the current research on the reoffense rates of sex offenders. The following sections summarize and discuss research findings on sex offenders, factors and conditions that appear to be associated with reduced sexual offending, and the implications that these findings have for sex offender management. Although studies on juvenile sex offender response to treatment exist, the vast majority of research has concentrated on adult males. Thus, this paper focuses primarily on adult male sex offenders.

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Referencing the Graphic above (Prentky Study) found on pg-6:

Conversely, Prentky, Lee, Knight, and Cerce (1997) found that over a 25-year period, child molesters had higher rates of reoffense than rapists. In this study, recidivism was operationalized as a failure rate and calculated as the proportion of individuals who were rearrested using survival analysis (which takes into account the amount of time each offender has been at risk in the community). Results show that over longer periods of time, child molesters have a higher failure rate—thus, a higher rate of rearrest—than rapists (52 percent versus 39 percent over 25 years).

They fail to mention this study is of KNOWN recidivists
in a civil commitment center in Massachusetts.
..Source..PDF by CSOM

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Note the following from a study "Sex offense recidivism, risk assessment, and the Adam Walsh Act" by Jill Levenson -in part- covering the Prentky study above:

pg-2-3: Sex crime policies are often driven by the belief that the overwhelming majority of sex offenders will reoffend. Sex offense recidivism statistics are frequently declared in legislative preambles without citing a source, and even when properly attributed, statistics are sometimes misinterpreted or misrepresented. For example, in the Alaska case of Smith v. Doe in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Megan’s Law, the opinion cited the reported findings of a study funded by the National Institute of Justice (Prentky, Knight, & Lee, 1997). While the 25-year recidivism rate of 115 predatory child molesters in that study was cited as 52%, it is important to note that this was a projected, not actual, recidivism rate.

As the authors explained on p. 11 of the article, the reported 52% recidivism rate describes the estimated probability that this particular sample of child molesters would “survive” in the community without being charged, convicted, or imprisoned for a sexual offense over a 25-year period. In actuality, 32% of the child molesters in the sample reoffended, and they did so relatively quickly – within 4 years. Ray Knight, one of the authors of the NIJ study, stated in a recent email correspondence to this writer: “There are several things about the ‘97 study that are important to mention. First, the sample is a civilly committed one. The recidivism rates for those referred to the Treatment Center for evaluation and released are significantly lower (see Knight & Thornton, 2007:) ..Source..

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Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: A 25-Year Follow-Up Study

October 2004:

See criticism of this study by R. Hanson.

Abstract:
Recidivism risk is an important component of criminal justice and correctional planning, especially when it comes to sex offenders who may pose physical danger to others. The current study assessed the recidivism rate of 320 sex offenders and 31 violent non-sex offenders over a 25 year follow-up period.

Participants were sex offenders referred for psychiatric treatment by the court, police, probation services, defense lawyers, or mental health professionals between 1966 and 1974. The comparison group was comprised of the 31 violent non-sex offenders. Recidivism data were drawn in 1994 and 1999 from the RCMP database and from hospital records (Civil commitment patients. Accordingly, results not to be applied to all sex offenders. eAdvocate see other criticisms below]).

Results of statistical analyses indicated that approximately 3 out of 5 sex offenders were re-convicted of a sexual offense during the 25 year follow-up. When all offenses were considered, including non-sex offenses, four out of five sex offenders recidivated during the follow-up period.

Child sexual abusers and exhibitionists were most likely to re-offend, while incest offenders were the least likely to re-offend. The findings reveal that sex offense recidivism remains a problem over a significant part of a sex offender’s adult life.

Correctional planning for sex offenders should include actuarial measures of risk, although they should be used with caution until more long-term studies of recidivism risk among this population can be carried out. Tables, notes, references ..Source.. by Ron Langevin ; Suzanne Curnoe ; Paul Fedoroff ; Renee Bennett ; Mara Langevin ; Cheryl Peever ; Rick Pettica ; Shameen Sandhu ---- Full copy here

A sample of 320 sex offenders and 31 violent non-sex offenders, seen for psychiatric assessment between 1966 and 1974, were compared retrospectively on lifetime recidivism rates to 1999 over a minimum of 25 years.

A number of criteria and data sources were used; RCMP records and hospital records were the best sources, albeit the RCMP had records for only 54.1% of the cases. Approximately three in five offenders reoffended, using sex reoffence charges or convictions or court appearances as criteria, but this proportion increased to more than four in five when all offences and undetected sex crimes were included in the analysis.

Group differences in recidivism were noteworthy, with child sexual abusers and exhibitionists most likely to reoffend and incest offenders least likely. Time at large and time incarcerated played a relatively minor role overall in results, except in the case of offenders who were sexually aggressive against adult females, courtship disordered, or violent.

The typical known criminal career spanned almost two decades, indicating that sex offence recidivism remained a problem over a significant part of the offenders' adult lives.

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Myth: Sex offenders have a 94 percent recidivism rate

Proponents of tough sanctions against sex offenders often cite a Canadian study published in 2004, “Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: A 25 year Follow-Up Study,” led by Canadian researcher Ron Langevin. The authors looked at 320 Canadian sex offenders referred to a single clinic for psychiatric evaluations between 1966 and 1974, when treatment programs for this group were uncommon. The report used an unusual definition of a recidivist as someone who had committed two or more sex crimes in their lifetime, even crimes they did before researchers began to follow them.

Langevin reported a 61.1 percent sex crime recidivism rate, including 51.1 percent for incest. The researchers also tabulated confessions the offenders made during counseling and new arrests that failed to bring convictions. Adding those presumed crimes to actual convictions increased the overall sexual recidivism rate to 88.3 percent, including 84.2 percent for incest. Measured this way, molesters of young children outside their own family had an even higher rate, 94.1 sex crime recidivism over 25 years. To this writer’s knowledge, that is the highest reported rate in any of the hundreds of existing recidivism studies. It underlies much of the widespread belief that all sex offenders are incurable and unrepentant.

Critics of Langevin claim his cohort was the worst of the worst offenders. Canadian researcher Karl Hanson has called it a nonrandom sample chosen for evaluations in connection with major prosecutions, civil commitment proceedings or insanity defense cases. This group also came under scrutiny in a different era when sex offender treatment programs were rare and experimental. The ensuing revolution in child protection and sex abuse prosecution over half a century has swollen American prison populations of sex offenders by fifty- and a hundred-fold. The group in prison now is arguably less prone to recidivism than members of the Langevin study.

Canadian researcher Cheryl Webster and colleagues have called the Langevin study so flawed it lacks any scientific integrity. In a rebuttal entitled “Results by Design: The Artefactual Construction of High Recidivism Rates for Sex Offenders,” Webster said more than half the individuals in the sample were already recidivists by Langevin’s definition at the time of their evaluations, thus ensuring at least a 50 percent recidivism rate. In the rest of the literature on criminology and in the popular press, recidivism generally means a new crime committed after release from prison.

Webster noted the Langevin sample was much larger at first. His team removed any people from the study whose criminal records had been lost or purged from the justice system after 15 years for lack of new crimes or charges. In effect, the scientists deleted most of the non-recidivists and thereby skewed the recidivism rate. In a reply to his critics, Langevin cautioned against making claims about all sex offenders based on this sample. He defended his definition of recidivism as one of many legitimate ways to measure it.

Those promoting tough sex offender laws rely as well on a 1997 study led by Robert Prentky. His group looked at 136 rapists and 115 child molesters released from the Bridgewater sex offender civil commitment center in Massachusetts between 1959 and 1986. The sexual recidivism rates based on new sexual charges were 32 percent for molesters and 25 percent for rapists. But the length of time the men were free in the community varied widely. If all had been at large the full 25 years covered in the study, the authors estimated the sexual recidivism rates would have been 52 percent for molesters and 39 percent for rapists.

This research dates from the same period as the Langevin findings and looked at a narrow sample of men already adjudicated to be an acute risk to reoffend. The average rapist had 2.5 sex crimes on his record before the crime that sent him to Bridgewater. The child molesters averaged 3.6 sex offenses prior to the crime that triggered civil commitment. Using Lengevin’s method, the recidivism rates for both groups would have been nearly 100 percent. The Prentky researchers concluded, “The obvious, marked heterogeneity of sexual offenders precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples.” ..Source..

Special Report: Misquoting of Prentky's 1997 Long Term Recidivism Study: Affecting a MAJOR US Supreme Court Decision.

This is a paper first published in 2005, on eAdvocate's now defunct "News & Noteworthy: Articles Concerning Sex Offender Issues" website, and now brought forward and adjusted for Blog format.

June 2005:
Misquoting and Misapplying Prentky Statistics
THE CLAIM: Many folks claim that after 25 years sex offenders' recidivism is 52% for child molesters and 39% for rapists, and they cite Prentky 1997.

THE PROBLEM: Many folks are misquoting and misapplying R.A. Prentky's 1997 long term recidivism study and its findings to ALL sex offenders when those recidivism rates should ONLY apply to folks released from Massachusetts' civil commitment center back when Prentky was Director of that civil commitment center.

THE CAUSE: Whn folks cite stats they fail to recognize who Prentky is [was], and who his study subjects were, and are unaware of the Prentky's caution about misapplying the study findings. Prentky himself failed to carry forward his own caution from one study to his next study, which affected and may have inadvertently mislead the US Supreme court in
Smith et al. v. Doe et al. 538 U.S. 84 (2003). The main sex offender case cited even today.

Who is R.A. Prentky? Dr. Prentky was Chief Psychologist and Director of Research at the Massachusetts Treatment Center for Sexually Dangerous Persons (MTC) from 1980 until 1993. (pg-45 footnote 45) ... In July, 1997, Dr. Prentky returned to the Massachusetts Treatment Center as Director of Assessment. MTC is the state's civil commitment center. All of Prentky's study subjects are persons who had already committed many sex offenses causing their commitment to MTC, and then were released. Prentky published four studies in 1997 based on MTC subjects.

(see below Prentky's 1997 Studies-A, B, C, and D).
(C and D is where the confusion occurred)

POINT-1: Confusion Caused by Study-C and Study-D:
When Prentky published Study-C he had just finished Study-D, but it was not yet published. See his comment in Study-C [excerpt p-11] where, in footnote 28, Prentky mentions Study-D.

POINT-2: Study-D Prentky Caution Missing from Study-C:
Now, notice Prentky's closing WARNING about the findings of Study-D: "We would like to conclude with two important caveats. The obvious, marked heterogeneity of sexual offenders precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples." This comment was not included in Footnote 28 of Study-C.

Accordingly, anyone who reads Study-C will never know they SHOULD NOT apply its findings to anyone but sex offenders released from civil commitment centers. This has caused many to misquote the study and its statistics. See below for a shock as to who has misquoted these two studies.

US Supreme court in Smith et al. v. Doe et al. 538 U.S. 84 (2003): The court's opinion cited Study-C which is missing Prentky's WARNING:

"Empirical research on child molesters, for instance, has shown that, "[c]ontrary to conventional wisdom, most reoffenses do not occur within the first several years after release," but may occur "as late as 20 years following release." National Institute of Justice, R. Prentky, R. Knight, & A. Lee, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Child Sexual Molestation: Research Issues 14 (1997)."

Accordingly, the court, while speaking of ALL sex offenders in society, incorrectly applied recidivism statistics which Prentky's WARNING (only found in Study-D) said not to do!

In the Smith case, according to the court's docket, several amicus curiae briefs were filed for the court to consider. Now, while I could not find all of those briefs I did find two that are relevant: Brief filed by the US Solicitor Generals office and one by The State of California, Attorney Generals office (for Attorney Generals of 43 other states), links below.

Those two briefs represent the findings, after review of the evidence and studies quoted, of over 40 lawyers. They quote from Study-D which contains the Prentky WARNING: "We would like to conclude with two important caveats. The obvious, marked heterogeneity of sexual offenders precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples.

It is shocking that so many would ignore Prentky's WARNING and infer that those statistics represent what ALL sex offenders in society are like. Remember, Prentky's words, WARNING that his statistics are not applicable to the overall class of sex offenders!