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Pedophillia and re-offending.

SomeGuy

Critical Thinker
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Joined
Mar 12, 2007
Messages
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This is taken from another thread:

skeptigirl said:
Unfortunately, it is lawyers who came up with the idea of using disease models of behavior as a mainstay of criminal defense. However, society typically distinguishes between not knowing what you were doing and knowing it was wrong but doing it because of your predisposing factors be they abuse as a child or genetic. We don't let pedophiles off the hook for behavior, but we recognize they are highly likely to re-offend.

<snip>
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Sexual predators, including pedophiles, having high re-offend rate is untrue, though it is often used to feed the moral panic concerning sexual predators.

I'm currently looking for sources but thought I'd kickstart the discussion.

Disclaimer: I am not a pedophile, nor do I play one on TV.
 
In the largest and most comprehensive study ever done of prison recidivism, the Justice Department found that sex offenders were in fact less likely to reoffend than other criminals. The 2003 study of nearly 10,000 men convicted of rape, sexual assault, and child molestation found that sex offenders had a re-arrest rate 25 percent lower than for all other criminals. Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison, and the ones who do are unlikely to re-offend.
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Source:
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060516_predator_panic.html
 
prepare to be tarred and feathered by the religious left around here

except danish dynamite maybe :)
 
Anything between 0 and 100 has been cited as reoffending statistic.
It also depends what constituted pedophilia, and certain subgroups have a higher likelyhood of reoffending (men who rape young boys for instance)

The problem is 18 year old boys who consensually bang 16 year olds in states where 16 isn't age of consent, get tagged as pedophiles and rapists and thrown on the heap.
 
Being skeptical is being skeptical.

Continously getting quoted that sexual predators have a high re-offense rate, should prompt skeptics to find out if this is actually true.

If statements like this would have been made about anything else no skeptic would accept it readily, but now they are sucked into the moral panic just the same as other people.

It is simply not true that sex-offenders have a higher re-offense rate as other criminals, in fact the opposite is true.

Yet we base policies on this perceived higher re-offense rate. Skeptics should ALWAYS demand that decision are based on facts, not beliefs.

However don't let this fool you into believing that I consider sexual offense as anything other than human behaviour at it's most basest. In my personal opinion they are the foulest of crimes there exist.

We should however seperate disgust from policy-making and base decisions to deal with sexual offense on the actual facts, not on false beliefs.
 
Well, now, we should look at where those percentages come from.

I mean, as someone mentioned, a 18 yr old who bangs a 16 yr old get thrown in with everyone else.


Any numbers on the hardcore, child-rapers as opposed to the statutory rape guys?

Any numbers on how many are considered murderers because they killed the kid in the middle of the sex act? Or is that still a sex crime? Which way do the numbers report it?


Let's get some real studies, not a meta-analysis by a journalist.
 
Well to start with, Radford's main premise is the TV news overblows the actual hazard rate. He isn't writing about reoffending pedophiles.
According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study ("Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994"), just five percent of sex offenders followed for three years after their release from prison in 1994 were arrested for another sex crime. A study released in 2003 by the Bureau found that within three years, 3.3 percent of the released child molesters were arrested again for committing another sex crime against a child. Three to five percent is hardly a high repeat offender rate.

In the largest and most comprehensive study ever done of prison recidivism, the Justice Department found that sex offenders were in fact less likely to reoffend than other criminals. The 2003 study of nearly 10,000 men convicted of rape, sexual assault, and child molestation found that sex offenders had a re-arrest rate 25 percent lower than for all other criminals. Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison, and the ones who do are unlikely to re-offend.
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Second, these stats only go three years out, and we don't see pedophiles separated out. And we don't see support for the claim serial offenders are likely to remain locked up, not that I know one way or the other and like clarsct says we don't know how many over 18s that had sex with under 18s are inappropriately labeled as sex offenders.

I agree with being skeptical regardless of past conclusions, but I'm not ready to declare this news article refutes all else. Ben Radford was at TAM5, BTW. He had a great talk in the paper presentations and I bought his book, "Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us", though I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
 
From the three studies here it appears some molesters are highly likely to re-offend and other less so.

Sexual recidivism among child molesters released from a maximum security psychiatric institution.
Mental Health Centre, Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada.

The recidivism of 136 extrafamilial child molesters who had received phallometric assessment in a maximum security psychiatric institution from 1972 to 1983 was determined over an average 6.3-year follow-up. Fifty had participated in behavioral treatment to alter inappropriate sexual age preferences. Thirty-one percent of the subjects were convicted of a new sex offense, 43% committed a violent or sexual offense, and 58% were arrested for some offense or returned to the institution. Subjects convicted of a new sex offense had previously committed more sex offenses, had been admitted to correctional institutions more frequently, were more likely to have been diagnosed as personality disordered, were more likely to have never married, and had shown more inappropriate sexual preferences in initial phallometric assessment than those who had not. Behavioral treatment did not affect recidivism.
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Prediction of recidivism in extrafamilial child molesters based on court-related assessments. Prediction of recidivism in extrafamilial child molesters based on court-related assessments.
One hundred ninety-two convicted extrafamilial child molesters were followed for an average of 7.8 years after their conviction. The percentage of men who had committed a sexual, a violent, or any criminal offense by the 12th year was 15.1, 20.3, and 41.6, respectively. The sexual recidivists, compared with the nonrecidivists; demonstrated more problems with alcohol and showed greater sexual arousal to assaultive stimuli involving children than to mutually consenting stimuli with children. The violent recidivists, compared with the nonrecidivists, were more likely to have a history of violence in the families in which they were raised and were rated significantly more psychopathic on the Psychopathy Checklist
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Recidivism of child molesters: a study of victim relationship with the perpetrator.
Subjects were then followed-up for a period of up to 15 years after conviction when they were at risk to re-offend in the community. Survival outcome data after the index sexual offense was collected for all new sexual, violent, and any criminal offenses. RESULTS: A larger proportion of men ( 16.2%) who sexually offended against children who were acquaintances, were charged with a new sexual offense than men who sexually offended against biological (4.8%) or their stepchildren (5.1%). The percentage of men who were subsequently charged with any type of criminal offense and who offended against their biological children (19%) was smaller than men who offended against children where the relationship is an extended family member (40%), acquaintances (35.9%) or strangers (45.2%). CONCLUSIONS: When comparing the different categories of relationship the victim had with the perpetrator, the category of stranger has been highlighted as a group with a higher risk for re-offense. Our results have shown that comparatively, the risk of acquaintance group is a significantly higher risk category than was previously thought. Although professionals are principally concerned with sexual recidivism, general criminality appears to present in relatively large proportions of all child molesters with the stranger group at the highest risk level. While no single factor will predict recidivism in itself, the importance of defining the relationship between the perpetrator and victim is evident from this study.
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This is the most telling part:
Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison
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If they aren't released from prison, they aren't going to offend again.

Also please note that it says SERIAL sex offenders. They have already re-offended multiple times.

By that quote, sex offenders re-offend 25% less than other criminals because sex offenders are more often kept in prison where they have no opprtunity to reoffend.
 
SomeGuy said:
This is taken from another thread:



Sexual predators, including pedophiles, having high re-offend rate is untrue, though it is often used to feed the moral panic concerning sexual predators.

I'm currently looking for sources but thought I'd kickstart the discussion.

Disclaimer: I am not a pedophile, nor do I play one on TV.
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A wonderfull area where the semantics and legal system are totaly messed up. You will be put on a sex offender list for being charged but not convicted in Illinois. There are offenders who will never, ever reoffend and they still get labeled. there are those who due to moeny and power will never get charged and they will reoffend.

I have stated before that we need to stop just lumping all sexual offeneders into the same category, we need to distinguish sexual predation as being the issue.

But if you ever work in the domestic violence field you recieve a very different view of the difference between the law and the actual practice of law.

An adult who is sepearted from the age of the minor by more than three years who has sex with a minor is most likely a sexual predator. families hide them, society hides them, money absolves them. But if you are poor or in the wrong place you will get the label.

Make no mistake, we need to incarcerate sexual predators, and we need to track them. The dangerous ones probably need to be killed or locked up for life. Any adult who is sexualy attracted to children needs some serious help.


But this is a good example of the hypocrisy in the US legal/social system.
RANT!
We must campaign to stop sexual abuse, but our system protects those with money and power, allows the use of sexual violence in many relationships, and allows children to grow up in poverty and violence. The worst forms of child abuse are ignored and tolerated on a daily basis. Our system abandons and underfunds all the programs to help children.

If you are twelve you basicaly can't get help from the system and are just told to deal with it.
 
Dancing David said:
But this is a good example of the hypocrisy in the US legal/social system.
RANT!
We must campaign to stop sexual abuse, but our system protects those with money and power, allows the use of sexual violence in many relationships, and allows children to grow up in poverty and violence. The worst forms of child abuse are ignored and tolerated on a daily basis. Our system abandons and underfunds all the programs to help children.

If you are twelve you basicaly can't get help from the system and are just told to deal with it.
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I agree with your rant. One of the worst problems is that sexual assault by a parent is treated (using sentencing as a measure) as being less heinous than sexual assault by a stranger* -- even though its likely to be far more traumatic to a child to be assaulted by someone they love, depend on, and have to be around all the time. This is more about property rights than it is about compassion for the children.

Also, it's only recently that bullying of children in schools has started to be taken seriously, but again it's not about compassion -- authorities are simply afraid the victim will come back with a loaded gun and kill people.


*according to a child advocate I read about once -- I don't remember his name, but his complaint makes sense to me. I'd be happy to be proved wrong on this.
 
I have never been molested, but I have been related to three child molesters/ rapists. Two biologically and one legally- the legal tie was severed (thankfully). One has never been caught, one was never sanctioned legally, and one served six years in prison. The one who served six years in prison molested his daughter.

I have the sick feeling that so many pedophiles are not caught, or are caught after they have escalated. On a personal note, this does devastate families (for generations in my experience) and rehabilitation, while nice for those offenders, offers the victimizer a shot that I don't think many states give victims (unless there is legislation I have not seen? that is possible).

The Canadian study is wonderful. Does anyone have a study that separates out statutory rape for, say 18 year olds with 16 year old partners?
 
SomeGuy said:
Source:
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060516_predator_panic.html
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One thing that bothers me about the statistics they quote. There is reason to believe that sexual abuse is significantly under-reported. So does a low re-offence rate in this study really mean a low re-offence rate, or a low rate of noticing that the person offended again?

Secondly the timing of the study bothers me. Early 90s. Wasn't that when false memory syndrome was fairly common? I'd wonder whether some of those offenders were not really offenders.

Anecdotal evidence is always suspect, but there are a number of paedophiles whose histories I personally know in some detail. Of the three I know best, only one got reported to law enforcement. And that only happened once. However I know for certain that all were serial offenders, all tried to stop, at least 2 hated themselves for what they'd done (I don't know about the third, and he was crazy on top of his other problems), and none were successful at stopping themselves. This makes me inclined to believe that there are a lot of serial offenders out there, and they're not likely to find it easy to control themselves. (I stopped at three because I do not know the history of the one I know fourth best well enough to know whether he abused more than one person. However that man was also reported to law enforcement.)

Anyways this is something that I'd love to have concrete statistics on. However my opinion is based on personal experience, not statistics. And as I've said, that experience leads me to believe that paedophiles are not easy to cure. (Indeed, I draw an analogy to how hard it is to change homosexuality. I think the analogy is very close - we have very little control over how our sexual drive winds up wired.)

Cheers,
Ben
 
Stats which may be of interest:

Of graduates of a rehabilitation program run at jails in NZ, the recidivism rate of child-sex offenders is around 4% at two years out of jail, compared to 51% recidivist rate of all time-served criminals.

That might sound good, but there are way too many imponderables to allow for to take much in the way of certainty. Does a higher percentage of child-sex criminals undergo voluntary treatment programs due to the public abhorrence at their crimes? Given strict parole conditions for these offenders, does that reduce their chances of committing what is often an opportunistic crime? Do more of them become even more cunning and get away with it next time?

One interesting point I did notice while reading on the subject is that people usually overestimate recidivism rates across all crime types.
 
Floating Egg said:
Irrelevant nitpick: pedophiles aren't necessarily child sexual abusers.
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From the little bit of research I looked at, it appears there are many versions of pedophiles so any conclusions about them in general needs to take that into account.
 
The Atheist said:
Stats which may be of interest:

Of graduates of a rehabilitation program run at jails in NZ, the recidivism rate of child-sex offenders is around 4% at two years out of jail, compared to 51% recidivist rate of all time-served criminals.

That might sound good, but there are way too many imponderables to allow for to take much in the way of certainty. Does a higher percentage of child-sex criminals undergo voluntary treatment programs due to the public abhorrence at their crimes? Given strict parole conditions for these offenders, does that reduce their chances of committing what is often an opportunistic crime? Do more of them become even more cunning and get away with it next time?

One interesting point I did notice while reading on the subject is that people usually overestimate recidivism rates across all crime types.
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Your first article doesn't have citations at the end and I didn't want to wade through the 5 pages to find something identifying where their facts came from. Without the original research, you don't know how many people they looked at, how they identified child-sex-offender and most importantly, how long out they looked for re-offenses and if people were re-arrested in another state would it have shown up in the records? You can't draw valid conclusions 3rd hand.

Can you find the source of their "facts"?
 
Dancing David said:
A wonderfull area where the semantics and legal system are totaly messed up. You will be put on a sex offender list for being charged but not convicted in Illinois.
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Not according to this...

Persons required to register as Sex Offenders are persons who have been charged of an offense listed in Illinois Compiled Statutes 730 ILCS 150/2(B) when such charge results in one of the following:
(a) A conviction for the commission of the offense or attempt to commit the offense,

(b) A finding of not guilty by reason of insanity of committing the offense or attempting to commit the offense, or

(c) A finding not resulting in an acquittal at a hearing for the alleged commission or attempted commission of the offense.
​
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