# What are the rates for re-offending for sex offenders?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 23, 2011, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447 "2011-04-23T10:52:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Laudenum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laudenum)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2011, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/1 "2011-04-23T10:52:00Z")
In Law and Order: SVU they normally make it look like a _fait accompli_ that a sex offender will re-offend.
But recently I read ana rticle (which I now cannot find) that said that actually the rates of re-offending were very, very low, outside certain categories of offenders.
I can understand why this would be good for dramatic effect, and why people would want it to be true (it makes gratuitous punishment easy if these people are unhelpable monsters) but what is the straight dope?
Are these criminals harder to reform?
What are their rates of reoffending?
I’d like statistics please, no “all rapists/paedophiles are evil and cannot be helped, cause I don’t want to forgive Uncle Jimmy”. Try and keep it factual, unless the anecdote is relevant and interesting - no Daily Mail, 'hang ‘em all’ stuff.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2011, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/2 "2011-04-23T11:50:25Z")
Child predators are much less likely to reoffend than those convicted of other felonies. [This study](http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html)cites a 5 year recidivism rate of 19% for child molesters, while other [non-sexually oriented felonies](http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2392) reoffend at a rate of 67% after only 3 years.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/3 "2011-04-23T22:11:03Z")
I tend to think of pedophilia as an innate characteristic, like homosexuality. (Note - not not not equating the two - just the mechanism). Something is misconnected in the brain and the “preference” module, what excites them, is wired for children rather than adult; where a homosexual is wired for same sex (adult) rather than opposite sex.
Thus, if(?) this is true, like homosexuality a pedophile cannot be “cured”, they can only restrain thier urges. Some succeed more than others. So the cops, being cynical automatically suspect past offenders. I suspect the ones who went 5 or 10 years or more without acting on their urges will be able to restrain themselves at least as much again once they are loose. Has anyone noticed that even in the non-sex-crime L&O shows the cops tend to harrass and arrest suspects, usually at their place of employment and this get them fired - and then it turns out the guy is innocent?
As for regular rapists - they probably either have anger issues or have trouble connecting action and consequence - so my educated guess is they reoffend at the same rate as other criminals with the same issues.
The majority of the regular criminal population are losers who either (a) have a drug problem, so the urgency to commit a crime for money overrides good judgement or (b) have no skills and limited tolerance for the personal control needed to fit into a workplace longer term, so steal to support themselves. Either type, unless properly corrected in prison will quickly re-offend.
(What correction - proper rehab? Job training and employment /life skills? Yeah, like that will happen in prison.)
So I suspect regular offenders are more likely to repeat.
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### Author:  [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/4 "2011-04-23T22:21:38Z")
I watched an old Danish movie last night where it stated that witches could not cured, as it were. The only remedy was to get a confession to save their soul and then burn them. And an accusation was all it took to make one a witch. I wonder if that is the sort of thinking that went into the post about incurable pedophilia?
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/5 "2011-04-24T03:40:55Z")
Sexual offenses are triggered by the sexual makeup of the brain. That is pretty ingrained. There are a few thousand years of evolution making sex & reproduction a pretty basic drive for the human species.
Aggression-related offenses (assault & battery, domestic violence, etc.) are related to hot-headedness and lack of self control, which is usually behavior learned from your upbringing, often as a child. So it’s often quite hard to un-learn that in people.
Economic-related offenses (stealing, fraud, embezzlement, business) are triggered by greed or need. Those are somewhat rational; those criminals can be deterred by the fear of getting caught, and taught the skills to earn a living another way. (Though, as md2000 said, many of them are ‘losers’ who lack those skills and are untrainable.)
So generally, the likelihood or recidivism is:
[ol]
[li]sexual offenses[/li][li]aggressive offenses[/li][li]economis offenses[/li][/ol]
But information on this is complicated by the disparity between re-offending and being caught re-offending. Many criminals repeat their offenses, but are smart enough or learned enough in prison to avoid being caught again.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/6 "2011-04-24T06:12:12Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#):
>
> So generally, the likelihood or recidivism is:[ol]
> [li]sexual offenses[/li][li]aggressive offenses[/li][li]economis offenses[/li][/ol]
Cite?
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### Author:  [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/7 "2011-04-24T06:20:33Z")
> [@janeslogin](#):
>
> I wonder if that is the sort of thinking that went into the post about incurable pedophilia?
Think about what turned you on years ago, how different are those things now?
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/8 "2011-04-24T07:36:45Z")
> [@md2000](#):
>
> I tend to think of pedophilia as an innate characteristic, like homosexuality.
And this tendency of yours, is it innate in you, or is it based on any, like, evidence or anything?
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/9 "2011-04-24T07:43:31Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#):
>
> Sexual offenses are triggered by the sexual makeup of the brain. That is pretty ingrained. There are a few thousand years of evolution making sex & reproduction a pretty basic drive for the human species..
The fact that the sex drive is innate is no sort of evidence that pedophilia is innate (I am pretty confident it is not evolutionarily selected for) or that it is an immutable psychological trait. (It might be, I don’t know whether it is or not, but you certainly have not provided any supporting argument or evidence with your handwave at evolution.) Pedophilia is not the result of someone having a sex drive (as we all do), but of that sex drive being inappropriately directed.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/10 "2011-04-24T08:07:06Z")
Yea, what **njtt** said. The actual [evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism_rates) seems to argue pretty strongly that recidivism rates for sexual offenders are pretty low compared to other types of crime. The vague citation-less psychobabel that gets offered in these types of threads isn’t really convincing as a counter-argument.
I guess its possible that sexual offenders that have imprisoned once are better at hiding their crimes the second time around then other criminals, and thus the recidivism numbers are unreliable. But I don’t think this is very plausible. Note that the size of the difference between recidivism rates means that second time sex offenders don’t just need to be better at hiding their crimes then other criminals, they need to be _massively_ better at hiding their crimes then other criminals. And with the effort that goes into tracking and publicizing released sex-offenders, its pretty hard to believe that they have an easier time getting away with reoffending then other, less sensational criminals.
So assuming that second time sexual offenders are not massively better at hiding their crimes then other less well monitored, less generally feared criminals, then I’d say the answer to the OP’s question is pretty clearly that sex-offenders are easier to reform then your more run of the mill criminal.
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2011, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/11 "2011-04-24T10:55:11Z")
> [@janeslogin](#):
>
> I watched an old Danish movie last night where it stated that witches could not cured, as it were. The only remedy was to get a confession to save their soul and then burn them. And an accusation was all it took to make one a witch. I wonder if that is the sort of thinking that went into the post about incurable pedophilia?
Haxen? Good movie. Was your version the criterion edition?
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/12 "2011-04-26T03:26:22Z")
Comparing sex offenders to each other is difficult, because they’re not at all a homogenous bunch. Calculating sex offender recidivism rates for all sex offenders in general is sort of like calculating the likelihood that any driver in the U.S. will be involved in an accident within a 12 month period. Standing alone, the percentage of the whole doesn’t really tell you a whole lot about the characteristics and recidivism rates of individual offenders, because it lumps them all together just like talking about the overall rate of car crashes among all drivers lumps together 17 year old male drivers of sports cars who have 10 or more speeding tickets with 50 year old female drivers of family sedans who have never had a ticket in their lives. One is statistically more dangerous than the other.
A 2002 Department of Justice study put the overall sex offender recidivism rate at around 5% to 6%, but that doesn’t mean that any individual offender you run across has exactly that percentage chance of reoffending; some will have much lower, and some will have much higher based on the individual characteristics and risk factors that they display. Take two hypothetical offenders: the first is a male, age 55, who sexually assaulted a 25 year old acquaintance in his home and has never been in any other criminal trouble - statistical studies show recidivism rates of other offenders with his same characteristics to be fairly low, 10% or so by some studies and much lower in others. Compare that guy with a 25 year old serial sex offender who sexually assaulted 6 male children unknown to him in public, while displaying a weapon, and has an extensive criminal record, including multiple noncontact sex offenses such as indecent exposure. This guy shows a number of statistical risk factors for recidivism that the first guy didn’t: (1) age 25 or under; (2) multiple victims; (3) male victims (offenders who commit crimes against male victims, particularly male children, recidivate at roughly twice the rate of others); (4) stranger victims who are not related to him (offenders who commit crimes against victims not in their own families have higher recidivism rates, and those who offend against strangers higher still) (5) public sex offenses; (6) use of deadly force; (7) criminal history and (8) history of noncontact sex offenses. Some studies show the second offenders long term recidivism rate as high as 60%, not even taking into account other risk factors such as extreme mental illness, pervasive sexual deviance, or psychopathy. Many, many more offenders will show characteristics closer to the first guy and pull the overall recidivism rate down, but it would be a mistake to lump the small but dangerous number of offenders like the second guy in with them.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/13 "2011-04-26T16:03:40Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> And this tendency of yours, is it innate in you, or is it based on any, like, evidence or anything?
Just observation and reading. Nobody had to tell me what turned me on, it developed. SImilarly, I have seen or read several interviews with homosexuals where they “knew” from an early age what their preference was - and it did not take a childhood abuse or trauma or dominant mother or whatever the earlier theories du jour were. They just were…
If hetero and gay tendencies are innate, perhaps it’s logical that other preferences are also “born that way”. Got a better theory?
As for re-offender rates; it’s a matter o self control. Not every gay or straight person commits sexual assault, so there are probably a lot of people out there who have urges to some degree but never act on them. Who knows? it’s not like people will admit this in a random survey…
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/14 "2011-04-26T17:02:05Z")
> [@md2000](#):
>
> I tend to think of pedophilia as an innate characteristic, like homosexuality. (Note - not not not equating the two - just the mechanism). Something is misconnected in the brain and the “preference” module, what excites them, is wired for children rather than adult; where a homosexual is wired for same sex (adult) rather than opposite sex.
>
> Thus, if(?) this is true, like homosexuality a pedophile cannot be “cured”, they can only restrain thier urges. Some succeed more than others. So the cops, being cynical automatically suspect past offenders. I suspect the ones who went 5 or 10 years or more without acting on their urges will be able to restrain themselves at least as much again once they are loose.
I’m a straight man. I don’t feel that I have a problem with restraining an urge to rape women (I have ZERO intent to commit such a crime). Are there pedophiles who don’t ever offend, and who don’t have a problem with committing sexual crimes? I’m guessing that the answer to this is going to be rather difficult because many non-offending pedophiles are going to be rather reluctant to reveal it.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/15 "2011-04-26T18:04:26Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> I’m a straight man. I don’t feel that I have a problem with restraining an urge to rape women (I have ZERO intent to commit such a crime). Are there pedophiles who don’t ever offend, and who don’t have a problem with committing sexual crimes? I’m guessing that the answer to this is going to be rather difficult because many non-offending pedophiles are going to be rather reluctant to reveal it.
Judging by the number of people (in all walks of life) arrested for possession of child pron, I would not be surprised if, like most heteros and gays, the majority can control their urges. The difference is every small slip in control for them is a criminal act, so the odds of a slip meaning prison are much higher; not a matter of someone just moving your hand away and saying “I’m not comfortable with that - take me home…”
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/16 "2011-04-26T18:24:27Z")
Back a few years ago, when there was a question of banning sex offenders from the City limits, a reported asked the DA, “How many registered sex offenders have committed a sex offense after leaving prison.” The DA, who had been in office a couple of decades, couldn’t recall a single case. All prosecutions were of people who had never had any sex offense on their records (logically, then, they should have banned all people who hadn’t been convicted of a sex offense, since they committed the crimes).
It’s anecdotal, but I’m sure there were plenty of cases of people who were recidivists after committing some other crime in the same areas and same time period.
The other issue is that “sex offender” is not the same as a “pedophile.” There are cases where someone committed statutory rape on a 16 year old, but were attracted to that particular victim, not all women that age. If kept away from her, he would not necessarily have any attraction to other women that age. “Sex offenders” also include pimps who may not have had sex with anyone underage. They include statutory rapists who thought the girl was giving consent; if the girl were older, it would be no crime (yes, an underage woman can’t give consent – and that’s a good thing – but a man might slip and forget that and never have any intention of doing it again). There are also the cases where two teenagers start sexting each other (rare).
So there are many aspects of the issue, depending upon the events that led to the charge. “Sex offender” is a wide net. The stereotype of a sexual predator who goes out and grabs little girls out of parks is only a very small minority of those who commit sex crimes.
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/17 "2011-04-26T20:12:24Z")
Here’s a small excerpt from a 2004 Department of Justice report on sex offense recidivsim with some statistics that illustrate how figures vary among different populations of sex offenders:
> [@](#):
>
> Any summary of the findings from existing studies of sex offender recidivism must begin by acknowledging that there is a great deal of variation in the offender populations studied, the size of the sample, the definition of recidivism, the length of the follow-up period, and in the use of control or comparison groups (Furby et al., 1989; Prentky et al., 1997). Most studies of sex offender recidivism are studies of only those persons released from prison or prison-based treatment programs (Barbaree, Seto, Langston and Peacock, 200 1 ; Beech, Friendship, Erikson and Hanson, 2002; Dempster and Hart, 2002; Dobson and Konicek, 1998; Escarela, Francis and Soothill, 2000; Nunes, Firestone, Bradford, Greenbert and Broom, 2002; Prentky et al., 1997), and most typically these studies sample a mixed group of sex offenders (Barbaree et al., 2001; Dempster and Hart, 2002; DiFazio, Abracen and Looman, 2001; Dobson and Konicek, 1998; Hanson and Harris, 2000; Nunes et al., 2002). Recidivism studies of persons convicted of the same type of sexual offense, such as rapists (Prentky et al., 1997; Rice, Harris and Quinsey, 1990), child molesters (Hanson, Steffy and Gauthier, 1993; Hanson, Scott and Steffl, 1995) or, more specifically, extrafamilial child molesters (Firestone, Bradford, McCoy, Greenberg, Curry and Larose, 2000; Prentky et al., 1997; Rice, Quinsey and Harris, 1991) are less common….
>
> Given these differences in the nature of the sample studied, the length of observation and the definition of recidivism, it is not surprising that reported rates of recidivism among sex offenders vary widely. Rates of reconviction for a new sex offense among mixed groups of sex offenders who have been observed for five years following release have been reported variously as (1) 4.3 percent of 5,098 offenders released from Ohio’s state prisons (Dobson and Konicek, 1998), (2) 9.3 percent of 321 offenders released from the Canadian federal correctional system (Dempster and Hart, 2002) and 28 percent of 178 offenders released from a Canadian maximum security psychiatric 3facility (Quinsey et al., 1995). Hanson and Bussiere (1998) reviewed 61 sex offender data bases containing information on a total of 28,972 offenders; they conclude that 36.3 percent of these offenders committed a new sexual offense and 13.4 percent were reconvicted for a new sexual offense during the first five years following release fiom prison.
>
> Recidivism rates vary by offense type. Hanson and Bussiere’s (1998) analysis notes that the rates of reoffending and reconviction for a new sex offense among the 9,603 child molesters are 36.3 and 12.7 percent, respectively, and that the rates of reoffending and reconviction among the 1,839 rapists are 46.2 percent and 18.9 percent, respectively. Firestone and his colleagues report that whereas 15.1 percent of their sample of extrafamilial molesters committed a new sexual offense during a follow-up period that averaged 7.8 years (Firestone et al., 2000), 6.4 percent of a sample of intrafamilial molesters committed a new sexual offense during a follow-up period that averaged 6.5 years (Firestone et al., 1999). Prentky et al. (1997) studied a group of 115 extrafamilial child molesters released fiom prison and report that 14 percent committed a new sexual offense during the first five years following release and that 52 percent committed a new sexual offense over 25 years of observation. Similarly, a 19 year follow-up study of child molesters released from prison notes that half of all those reconvicted for a new sex offense were reconvicted 10 years after release (Hanson et al.,
> 1993).
> **[203905.pdf](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203905.pdf)**
>
> 5.00 MB
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/18 "2011-04-26T20:14:27Z")
To point out the obvious: A pedophile is not going to do whatever it was that got them arrested the first time. In order to be classified as a re-offender, they have to be caught a second time.
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### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/19 "2011-04-26T20:30:21Z")
I asked a friend who works in rape crisis intervention, and she pointed me to this page, which looks closely related to **pravnik** ’s link: [http://www.ncjrs.gov/app/topics/MoreFAQs.aspx?TopicId=20](http://www.ncjrs.gov/app/topics/MoreFAQs.aspx?TopicId=20)
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-rates-for-re-offending-for-sex-offenders/579447/20 "2011-04-26T20:36:42Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> The fact that the sex drive is innate is no sort of evidence that pedophilia is innate (I am pretty confident it is not evolutionarily selected for) or that it is an immutable psychological trait.
Perhaps not, though it’s difficult to imagine that incarceration is going to actually change what a person enjoys sexually. A person who gets jailed for smoking weed may decide he can live without it once he’s free, but I doubt he’s actually going to now dislike the feeling of being high.
Even if this trait is innate, there’s no particular reason a convicted pedophile can’t live a perfectly crime free life after release.