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Original Article05/14/2013By Andrew M. SeamanNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of U.S. children who were exposed to violence, crime and abuse in 2011 was essentially unchanged from 2008, according to a new government survey. Researchers who...

The purpose of the present study was to test models of combining static and dynamic risk measures that might predict sexual recidivism among adult male sex offenders better than any one type of measure alone. Study participants were 759 adult male sex offenders under correctional supervision in Vermont who were enrolled in community sex offender treatment between 2001 and 2007. These offenders were assessed once using static measures (Static-99R, Static-2002R and VASOR) based on participants' history at the date of placement in the community. A 22-item dynamic risk measure (SOTNPS) was used multiple times to assess participants, shortly after their entry into community treatment and approximately every six months thereafter. Analyses of SOTNPS scores resulted in the development of a new 16-item dynamic risk measure, the Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS).

It is only in the last 30 years that society has begun to fully recognize child sexual abuse as the devastating problem that it is, to portray the trauma of sexual abuse in the media, and to seek ways to prevent and eliminate sexual violence. As communities have begun to demand a response to sexual abuse, legislators have passed an increasing number of policies directed at the people who sexually abuse. In 2007 and 2008 alone, more than 1500 sex offender-related bills were proposed in state legislatures and over 275 new laws were enacted. Nearly all of these laws and policies follow two key trends: 1) they increase the length of sex offender incarceration and 2) they monitor, track, and restrict individuals convicted of sexual offenses upon their return to communities. While the intent of these laws is to protect communities from those who abuse, to improve responses to allegations of abuse, and to prevent child sexual abuse, the broad application of these laws has unintended consequences which may make our children and communities less safe.

Though it has been demonstrated that Sexual Assault type offences receive longer sentencing when the opportunity is given (Roberts, 1990), the variables surrounding this have not been clearly demonstrated in literature. In order to achieve a better understanding of this phenomenon, it is hypothesized that variables will inevitably be derived from a somewhat general perspective, and later refined. One study (Holland & Sheets, 2009) concluded that vulnerability and perceived vulnerability of the victim had a positive correlation with perpetrator sentence length for hypothetical scenarios. Although this outcome is of some use, its intent was not to determine why. When applying both studies mentioned above in practice, I feel that although this is highly relevant, it merely proposes an answer to "why?" with limited insight. The outcome, that people will give longer sentences to perpetrators of vulnerable victims, exclusively answers to those cases where the victim was indeed vulnerable.

Original ArticleView the PDF documentKelly Richards ISSN 1836-2206 Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, September 2011Abstract: Sexual offending against children is a highly emotive issue. It is nonetheless important that public policy...

This article argues that the new preventive law focus in sex offender laws is largely ineffective and too costly to personal liberty. The application of sex offender laws involving civil commitment, sex offender registration, and residency restrictions is often based on an individualized analysis of future dangerousness, i.e., the risk the defendant will sexually recidivate. In assessing future dangerousness, experts and courts place heavy emphasis on the use of actuarial tools, basically checklists that mental health experts use to derive statistical estimates of risk. This article provides substantiation that actuarial tools, while enjoying the imprimatur of science, suffer from significant empirical faults. Yet courts are largely abandoning their gatekeeping roles in accepting the experts' testimony using actuarial tool predictions of risk without critical review as required by the Daubert and Frye evidentiary standards. The paper theorizes that this is likely a pragmatic strategy considering the current political and public thirst for retribution against sexual predators. But, use of this empirically-challenged science exacerbates the practice of applying sex offender restrictions to inappropriately labeled individuals. Finally, this article takes advantage of the interdisciplinary trend of engaging social science with the law on expert evidence. More specifically, it offers an empirical assessment of future dangerousness opinions within the Daubert/Frye scientific evidence frameworks. The significance of the conclusion reached in this article is clear: if the law continues to rely upon suspect science that results in the wrong individuals being subject to liberty-infringing sex offender laws, then the drain on criminal justice resources will leave the truly dangerous offenders without sufficient supervision at the risk of public safety.