Sexual Offending

A Criminological Perspective

Patrick Lussier, Eric Beauregard, Patrick Lussier, Eric Beauregard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315522678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Criminología

There is growing recognition that sexual offending is a multi-determined phenomenon requiring a multi-disciplinary perspective. The significant contribution of psychology and psychiatry, but also sociology, gender studies and anthropology to the study of sex offending and perpetrators of sex offenses has played a key role in the development of a distinct field of research. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in criminological research on the topic, introducing criminological theory and concepts, scientific evidence and observations, and new methodologies to the field.This book brings together international leading scholars to consider key topics on sex offending and, where possible, compare and contrast criminological viewpoints with those of other disciplines, such as psychology and psychiatry. This book considers the following questions:

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• Are the key explanatory factors of sex offenses completely distinct and different from those of non-sex crime and delinquency?

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• Are current models explaining adult sex offending also applicable to explain sex crimes on college campuses, female sex offending, sexual exploitation, sexual homicide, or child luring over the internet?

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• Are today's youth involved in sex offenses tomorrow's adult perpetrators of sex crimes?

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• What is the risk of sexual recidivism and are risk assessment tools effective to identify individuals at-risk of committing another sex crime in the future?

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• Are current legal measures used to prevent sex crimes effective? What are the known effects of such measures?

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• What are the issues and challenges related to the criminal investigation of sex offenses?

This book is essential reading for students and researchers from disciplines such as criminology, psychiatry, psychology, sexology, social work and sociology, as well as criminal justice professionals and practitioners such as police investigators, prosecutors, judges, probation/parole officers, and treatment providers/counsellors involved with individuals having perpetrated sex offenses.

PART I

Explanatory and sociolegal theoretical perspectives

1

‘SEX OFFENDER’ THEORY AND RESEARCH IN CONTEXT

The relative absence of a criminological perspective

Patrick Lussier and Eric Beauregard

In 1951, Dr. Paul Tappan, a professor at the New York University, raised red flags at the New Jersey Commission on the Habitual Sex Offender regarding the use of open-ended sentences and the so-called sexual psychopath laws for individuals having been convicted of a sex offense. Tappan was concerned about the implicit underlying assumptions regarding the “sex offender” and whether these assumptions were based on solid empirical evidence. Four assumptions were of much concern at the time:

(a) The behavior of the sex offender is more dangerous than that of other types of felonious criminals such as robbers, burglars, thugs, kidnappers, arsonists, or murderers;

(b) That the sex offender is more disposed to repeat his offenses or in the alternative to progress to more serious ones;

(c) That effective treatment methods are known and, to the difference of other types of criminal, require an indefinite treatment period to be effective;

(d) That treatment personnel and resources including institutional facilities are available and can be relied upon to offer effective treatment methods.

These underlying and implicit assumptions were representative of the era and the good intentions to help cure the sex offender through psychiatric methods and techniques. In the words of Tappan (1951), however, none of these assumptions were true or reflective of the scientific knowledge of the time. According to him, these assumptions were based on myths or simply false conclusions that nullified the good intent of the open-ended sentences (see also, Tappan, 1955).

Good policy cannot rely on wishful thinking and fallacies, as implied by Tappan, but on theoretically grounded, empirical-based and methodologically sound research and development. Tappan, who would later be appointed as a Professor of Law and Criminology at the University of California at Berkeley provided a very unique and distinctive view about the issue of sex offending and would plant the seeds of a criminological perspective on the phenomena. Indeed, not only did Tappan question the predominant image of the “sex offender,” but also how such an image came about and how best to respond to such behaviors by relying on science and scientific methods of inquiry and observations.

In recent years, criminology has grown into an academic discipline of its own, with its history and research paradigms, theories, concepts and explanations, its own scientific methods, research instruments and analytical tools. The theoretical, methodological, and empirical contribution of criminology to the measurement and description as well as the explanation and prevention of crime and delinquency is undeniable nowadays. Criminology is no longer just a multidisciplinary field where psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, biologists, or economists examine criminal phenomena with their respective lenses. In fact, criminology has matured rapidly with the emergence of several fields of research, such as biosocial criminology, critical criminology, environmental and computational criminology, developmental and life course criminology to name a few. These fields of research have produced an extended body of knowledge regarding the measurement, description, explanation, and prediction of criminological phenomena. Criminology also involves the study of societal response to criminological phenomena and how some phenomena become socially and legally constructed as crime while others do not; who is involved in the sociolegal construction of these phenomena as crime and under what circumstances. This body of theory and knowledge, however, has not been echoed for all criminological phenomena.

One area where criminology has been relatively absent is the field of research on sex offending. This may appear counterintuitive to those understanding criminology to be simply the study of criminological phenomenon. However, since the late 1960s, while the knowledge regarding individuals involved in sex offenses has grown considerably, such knowledge has come from scholars not familiar nor acquainted with theoretical, methodological, and empirical knowledge stemming from criminology and criminal justice. In fact, it is safe to say that, up until recently, the field of research on sex offending has grown independently from criminological theory and research. This is explained, at least in part, by criminologists’ apparent reluctance to discuss issues related to sex offending. Indeed, to date, criminology’s contribution to the field of sex offending has been relatively marginal at best. This is not to say that criminology has not made some significant theoretical or empirical contributions over the years, going back to Edwin Sutherland’s (1950) examination of the development of sexual psychopath laws and, more recently, Franklin Zimring (2004) and his critical analysis of criminal justice response to youth convicted of a sex offense in the USA.

To date, however, criminologists’ contribution has had a minimal impact on the development of scientific thinking, empirical knowledge, methods of inquiry, and policy development in the field of sex offending. Criminologists’ venturing into the field of research on sex offending has often not been well received, oftentimes because it challenged the more mainstream ideas, perceptions, and ideological thinking about the “sex offender.” The few times that criminologists did venture into the field of sex offending, it raised issues and concerns or drew conclusions that sparked negative, and emotionally-charged reactions, such as Menachem Amir’s (1971) examination of rape cases in Philadelphia, Richard Felson’s (2002) critical examination of the underlying assumptions of the mainstream feminists’ explanation of rape and sexual assault or Karen Terry’s (2008) investigation of child sexual abuse among clergy members to name a few.

In spite of Dr. Tappan’s cautionary words six decades ago, several myths, misconceptions and misrepresentations, stereotypes, and unsubstantiated claims about sex offending and individuals perpetrating acts of sexual violence and abuse remains. Sex offending is an emotionally-charged topic and, too often, policy responses to the issue of sexual violence and abuse has been more about reassuring the public by taking measures to increase community protection against the threats posed by known sex offenders in the community. Indeed, the last decade has witnessed the emergence of new criminal justice policies aimed directly at individuals who have been convicted of a sex offense under the assumption that these individuals are characterized by some fixed and stable predisposition to commit sex offenses. Indeed, for the past twenty years or so, specific legal dispositions have been implemented to improve community protection against the threat of the sexual recidivist, such as longer prison sentences, sex offender registry and national database, civil commitment and mandatory treatment programs, DNA database, community notification of various forms, intensive community surveillance, housing restrictions, and so on. In many ways, Dr. Leonore Simon (2000) would raise similar red flags about current sex offender policies that Dr. Tappan had previously raised.

While legal and penal initiatives are well intended, their positive impact on the prevention of sex crime rates remains elusive if not absent. Yet, several unintended negative consequences resulting from these policies are more and more documented by scholars, analysts, and researchers. In fact, scholars have gradually noticed the increasing gap between scientific knowledge about offending and current sex offender policies.

Until recently, and to a large extent, criminologists have been relatively silent and distant from these issues. It could be reasonably argued that one reason explaining the relative absence of criminological thinking in the policy arena of sex offending is theoretically-based. Generally speaking criminologists tend to prefer general over specific explanations of crime and delinquency. It is believed that general explanatory models of crime and delinquency are more parsimonious and explain sex offending as much as they explain drug dealing, homicide, car theft, and burglary. This idea was reinforced by: (a) the relative abandonment of crime-based typologies in the late 1980s that distinguished offenders based on their most recent criminal activities (e.g., Gibbons, 1988); (b) the observation that persistent offenders are versatile and do not specialize in any crime type or form even if more recent research has provided more nuance to such conclusions (e.g., Klein, 1984); (c) that a small subgroup of offenders were responsible for the vast majority of all crimes committed by members of their birth cohort (e.g., Wolfgang, Sellin, & Figlio, 1972); (d) most importantly, that sex offenders, as with individuals involved in other crime types, are decision-makers capable of a cost-benefit analysis before the perpetration of their offense (Beauregard & Leclerc, 2007); and (e) that most “sex offenders” are versatile, therefore committing a great variety of criminal offenses (e.g., Lussier, 2005). According to this line of reasoning, therefore, there is no need to introduce further complexities to explain specific forms of crime and delinquency such as sex offending. That said, if general explanations of crime and delinquency are sufficient explanations of sex offenses, then one needs to scientifically demonstrate this. Indeed, demonstrating that general criminological theories provide relevant concepts and hypotheses to explain sex offending is one thing, demonstrating that such models are sufficient explanations of sex offending is another and the empirical demonstration of the generality assumption with respect to sex offending has not been overly tested.

There are only rare occurrences where criminological theories and hypotheses have been examined in the context of sex offending (e.g., Beauregard, Proulx, Rossmo, Leclerc, & Allaire, 2007; Ha & Beauregard, 2016; Lussier, LeBlanc, & Proulx, 2005). Further, a common assumption across criminological theories (e.g., Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) is that the concepts and hypotheses can be applied to explain antisocial and criminal behavior. Needless to say, if general theories of crime and delinquency were sufficient explanations of sex offending, then we would probably observe more cases of child molestation among Mafia members, drug dealers involved in the production and distribution of child pornography, or chronic violent offenders exhibiting their genitals to strangers in public. Testing criminological theories and general explanations of crime and delinquency on specific phenomena such as child molesting, child pornography, and exhibitionism to name but a few is a fruitful approach to testing the scope of a general explanation of crime. In fact, at first glance, some criminological theories, such as social and personal control theories (e.g., LeBlanc, 2005) or strain theories (e.g., Agnew, 2006), may be fruitful avenues to improve our understanding of sex offending (Cusson, 2005). Other theories, such as Sampson and Laub’s (2005) theory of persistence in and desistance from offending may be more challenging to explain phenomena like child molestation and incest. The origins and the reasons for the relative absence of a criminological view(s) on sex offending run deeper.

Another related reason is the long held view that sex offending, as a phenomenon, belongs to another academic discipline and that criminology has little to offer to describe, explain, and prevent sex offenses. That general explanation of juvenile delinquency and adult offending are too broad to explain behaviors as complex and specific as sex crimes. Over the years, the main views and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Contributors
• Part I: Explanatory and sociolegal theoretical perspectives
• Part II: Special topics
• Part III: Practical application of research
• Index