And can you provide citations to any studies? Either print or online.
From this article
Who cares if they do? Once is enough. IMHO should be a capital crime, execute, execute.
Read the forum heading–General Questions.
Read what the OP asks. Answer accordingly.
Opinions belong in IMHO, or start a Pit thread.
samclem
Hold on a sec, we aren’t allowed to be smartassess anywhere but The Pit?
Also consider that sex offenders are prevented from re-intergrating into society once they have paid their debt to society (sex offender lists, restrictions on where they can live), leaving their after prison lives unstable, and you can suspect why the recitivism rate is higher.
Recidivism rates only measure one thing: How many convicted felons GET CAUGHT doing the same thing again. There is no way to find out how how many child molesters continue molesting children without getting caught again.
I’ve heard this too. My understanding was that sex offenders have a low recapture rate (maybe 10%) for sex crimes. However considering that only about 10% of child molestations are brought to the attention of authorities that number could be meaningless.
http://www.csom.org/pubs/mythsfacts.html
child molesters had a 13% reconviction rate for sexual offenses and a 37% reconviction rate for new, non-sex offenses over a five year period; and
rapists had a 19% reconviction rate for sexual offenses and a 46% reconviction rate for new, non-sexual offenses over a five year period.
Another study found reconviction rates for child molesters to be 20% and for rapists to be approximately 23%
I read a counterrebuttal to a report like that claiming the real reoffense rate was much higher. For example higher in that same report it says
A 1992 study estimated that only 12% of rapes were reported
Figures I’ve seen show anywere from 60-95% of child molestings are not reported.
So recidivism alone is not going to be a good guage. However considering that most sexual abuse is committed by friends & family and that friends & family will not allow a convicted sex criminal alone with a potential victim their chances to reoffend will be alot lower.
So all in all I don’t know. You’d need to examine data from things like confessions, ie how many sex offenders confess to reoffending when released.
I’m not trying to be a smartass or anything, but if the crimes aren’t reported then how do they know 60-95% of them aren’t reported?
And for rapes too. How do they get that only 12% are reported?
They’re general educated guesses, for the most part, based on what the offenders themselves confess to later, and other forms of data such as people who seek counselling for sexual abuse they never reported, calls to rape crisis lines, and the like. Anonymous studies are sometimes done asking people if they’ve ever been sexually abused.*
The statistics can sometimes be skewed-- you have to read them carefully. Sometimes, they include sex offenders who go back to prison for other reasons.
- My husband is a sociology teacher at our local university branch campus. When teaching about criminal behavior and devience, he passes out an anonymous survey asking people if they’ve done certain behaviors. He’s been collecting this data for years. Almost every quater, at least one person has confessed to forcing sex on an unwilling partner, or having sexual contact with underaged persons. Of course, this is a very informal study, and one can never dicount the “smart-ass” factor, but it certainly could be true.
This article only addresses the recidivism of sexual offenders, while I believe the OP was asking about crime in general. I bring this up because I recall seeing something (don’t know where) that said sexual offenders had the lowest recidivism rate of violent crimes.
Do I have that wrong?
These factors could also prevent recidivism, by making it more difficult to reoffend. That is what they are intended to do. I don’t question that there could be some unintended consequences, but the intended consequences, such as limiting their access to vulnerable children, would also occur.
A relatively recent study published in the British Journal of Criminology into the long-term reconviction rates of sex offenders is available to read here.
For the reconviction rates of offenders against children specifically see Tables 3 & 4 on this page.
I haven’t read through all of it yet, but the main thing I noticed -
The rates of re-conviction for a sexual offence are relatively low - 1.2% after 2 years, 4.3% after 4 years, 8.5% after 6 years. (The reconviction rates for non-sexual offences are higher, but the OP seems to be asking specifically about sexual offences). Of course, this is re-conviction, not reoffending, which the study acknowledges here
Because, they pulled the figure out of their ass.
Truth is, nobody has a clue how many child molestation cases go unreported. The perpetrators won’t talk, obviously. And if the victim never talks (whether out of shame, fear, or becoming convinced that he/she actually liked it) – how will anyone find out? There is simply no earthly way to tell for sure.