Citation

Craig LA. J. Sex. Aggress. 2008; 14(3): 185-198.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13552600802073132

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Research into the effect of age on sexual recidivism risk is a relatively new and developing area of interest and is likely to be of great interest for forensic practitioners responsible for the community supervision of sexual offenders. Meta-analytical and follow-up reconviction studies indicate an inverse relationship between age and sexual recidivism risk, where younger sex offenders pose a greater risk of reconviction than older sex offenders. This finding has led to the development of actuarial risk scales which identify younger sex offenders (less than 25 years) as posing the greatest risk. However, recent research studies have reported contradictory results to this assumption and found a non-linear relationship between age and sexual recidivism risk. Only a small number of studies have investigated the effect of age on sexual recidivism by comparing age bands and rates of sexual recidivism. Researchers have also considered the effect of age on actuarial risk, which risk factors are associated with which age bands and sexual recidivism rates between sex offender subgroups. The purpose of this paper is to integrate this research and to link commonalities between these studies. This paper organizes the effect of age on sexual recidivism into five categories: (i) the effect of age and actuarial risk; (ii) the effect of age on sexual arousal; (iii) the effect of age-at-release on sexual recidivism risk; (iv) the effect of age-at-first-offence on sexual recidivism risk; and (v) the effect of age on child molesters and rapists on sexual recidivism risk. Important differences were found between age bands of sexual offenders in terms of sexual recidivism risk and actuarial risk factors as well as differences between rapists and child molesters. The relative importance of factoring age when assessing risk in sex offenders is discussed.

Language: en