Theories & Studies Flashcards
Hohl and Stanko (2015)
Hohl and Stanko (2015) help us understand how conviction rates for rape in the UK are amongst
the lowest in Europe. They studied a large and representative sample of allegations of rape made by female victims to the London Metropolitan Police. The available data included considerable detail about the attack, the victim, any suspects and the police investigation process. The attrition problem or justice gap refers to the fact that the majority of rapes are not reported to the police and, of the ones which are, only a minority lead to a conviction.
Hohl and Stanko argue that decision makers in the
criminal justice system (police officers, prosecutors,
judges and jurors) use ‘schematic processing’ which are cognitive heuristics which allow beliefs, attitudes and stereotypes to enter decision making.
“Real rape?”
Estrich’s (1987) conceptualisation of ‘real rape’ is a rape by a weapon wielding stranger in a dark outside location, using force, which is met with resistance by the victim, and results in tangible injury.
The expectation of violent and extreme behaviours in rape do not reflect the reality of rape. A complaint of rape which matches these pre-conceptions of ‘real rape’ is more likely to progress through the criminal justice system. But the ‘real rape’ is quite unlike the typical rape in which the perpetrator is known to the victim.
Young offenders & sexual offences
There is considerable evidence that young offenders are responsible for significant proportions of sex
offences. According to the Home Office (2003), in the UK 20 per cent of those convicted for a sexual crime are under the age of 18 years. About a third of rapes of adult women and 30–50 per cent of child sexual abuse is carried out by adolescents.
Vitacco, Viljoen and Petrila (2009)
Vitacco, Viljoen and Petrila (2009) argue
that the burgeoning of interest in adolescent sexual offending was fuelled by legislation to protect the public from adolescent sex offenders. In particular, the USA’s Sexual Offender and Notification Act of 2006 (also known as the Adam Walsh Act) made provision for including adolescent sex offenders on public registers.
Graves et al. (1996)
Graves et al. (1996) carried out a meta-analytic review
of studies of youthful sex offenders by studying empirical research studies from 1973–93. Meta-analysis is the study of trends across different studies of similar phenomena (Howitt and Cramer, 2008).
The study concentrated on the demographic and parental characteristics of youthful offenders. The authors believe that the youthful offenders could be classified into three different, exclusive categories:
• Paedophilic: generally their first offence was committed between 6 and 12 years of age. They consistently molest younger children and prefer female victims.
• Sexual assault: these are youthful offenders whose first reported offence is between 13 and 15 years but their victims may vary substantially and include both older victims than themselves and younger victims.
• Mixed offence: these are youngsters who commit a
variety of offences such as sexual assault, molesting
younger children, exhibitionism, voyeurism, frotteurism, etc.
Overall, youthful sex offenders in general tended to have the following characteristics:
• lower socio-economic class origins;
• pathological family structures and interaction style;
• their fathers were physically neglected as a child;
• their mothers were physically abused as a child;
• substance abuse was common among the fathers.
Langstrom (1999)
Langstrom (1999) studied 15- to 20-year-olds who had been subject to the Forensic Psychiatric Examination over the period 1988–95. These young sexual offenders had extensive previous histories of
sexually abusing others. Young sexual offenders brought to the attention of the authorities for the first time already had an average of seven victims.
The predictors of sexual offending included:
• early onset of sexually abusive behaviour;
• male victims;
• multiple victims;
• poor social skills.
(McCrory,
Hickey, Farmer and Vizard, 2008).
it has been suggested that sexually harmful behaviours may be a marker for (i.e.
predictor of) a future more general crime pattern (McCrory, Hickey, Farmer and Vizard, 2008).
Moffitt
1993) and Moffitt, Caspi, Harrington and Milne (2002
Moffitt (1993) and Moffitt, Caspi, Harrington and Milne (2002), a group of children can be identified who persistently engage in antisocial behaviours at the different stages of their life history – from their pre-school period into adulthood. Children as young as ten years of age carry out a sizeable minority of sexually inappropriate acts.
Deficits in their self-regulatory abilities, cognitive functions and temperament are manifested in various aspects of their life.
McCrory et al.
McCrory et al. found that:
• early sexually harmful behaviours which have begun
before the age of ten years predict a general crime
offence trajectory into adolescence and adulthood;
• sexually harmful behaviours first begun after the age of ten years did not predict a child’s long-term future of
general crime.
Early onset sexual abusers need to be distinguished
from those who begin offending in their adolescence.
McCrory et al. found that the childhoods of early onset
sexual abusers were generally characterised by a lack of parental supervision and inadequate sexual boundaries in the family.
Early onset of sexually harmful behaviour serves as a clinical marker of the increased likelihood of future risk of general delinquency. Consequently, any treatments and interventions they receive should not be limited to their sexually abusive behaviours but extend more generally to factors related to delinquency.
Seto and Lalumiěre (2010)
Seto and Lalumiěre (2010) reviewed explanations of
adolescent sex offending in boys and tested them using meta-analysis. The data came from 59 separate studies which compared male adolescent sex offenders with male adolescent non-sex offenders. A big problem is that adolescent sex offending is treated as part of a single group as if youngsters who rape adult women and children who molest other children sexually are the same. This failure to distinguish sub-types of offenders makes interpreting research findings more difficult or even impossible.
Adolescent sex offending could not be explained in terms of general antisocial tendencies alone.
The largest effect sizes were for atypical sexual interests, sexual abuse history, criminal history, antisocial associations and substance abuse in that order.
Lussier, Van den Berg, Bijleveld and
Hendriks (2012)
Lussier, Van den Berg, Bijleveld and
Hendriks (2012) A sample of almost 500 young sex offenders in Holland was studied from adolescence into adulthood. The vast majority of these juvenile sex
offenders, sex offending was confined to adolescence.
Only one in ten continued to offend significantly into
adulthood.
Their initial at 14 years of age and their final assessment at about 29 years on average. Most had sexually offended against pre-pubertal victims at least five years their junior (52 per cent of sample). Thirty-two per cent had abused peers and 16 per cent had abused in groups. The researchers tracked the patterns for both 1) non-sexual and 2) sexual offending separately into adulthood, using a complex statistical method (semiparametric group-based modelling).
For non-sexual offending, the most common pattern was a low frequency of offending from adolescence into adulthood. The second most common trajectory was not to become active offenders in their adulthoods. The longterm, high rate trajectory involved only a very small percentage of offenders.
Turning to the patterns of sex offending, only two distinct trajectories were found:
• Sex offending trajectory 1 (90 per cent of the sample):
Adolescence limited: This group peaked in terms of
their sexual offending at the age of 14 years. There was
then a rapid decline and sex offending terminated by
approximately 20 years of age. About one third showed recidivism in childhood but only 2 per cent reoffended sexually in adulthood.
• Sex offending trajectory 2 (10 per cent of the sample):
High rate slow desisters: This group started sex offending younger and peaked in terms of sex offending younger at the age of 12, but then their sex offending declined rather slowly from that age onwards and reached similar low levels to the adolescence limited group at about the age of 30 years or so.
