Crime & Delinquency July 1982:Abstract:
Although recidivism among dangerous sexual offenders is generally reported to be low, clinical experience suggests otherwise. In order to assess the actual recidivism rate of offenders who commit sexual assaults, we administered to a sample of eighty-three convicted rapists and fifty-four convicted child molesters an anonymous questionnaire in which they were asked a series of questions pertaining to their history of sexual offenses. The results indicate that the majority of the offenders had been convicted more than once for a sexual assault. Furthermore, on average, they admitted to having committed two to five times as many sex crimes for which they were not apprehended. This study suggests that dangerous sex offenders usually commit their first sexual assault during adolescence, and that they persist in this criminal behavior, but that the offense has low visibility. For this reason recidivism, as judged by rearrests, is not a dependable measure of rehabilitation of the sexual offender.
Study Sample:
Our sample of offenders was drawn from two different populations: men who were convicted of sexual assault but were committed to a security treatment center for rehabilitation before sentencing, the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville; and men who were serving time for a sexual assault in a maximum security prison, the Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers.
The subjects for this study not only come from different regions of the country, but also were in two different types of settings: one a mental health facility designed exclusively for sexual offenders, and the other a traditional correctional facility in which the sexual offenders were housed in the general population with other adult male felons.
