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Evidence for a new, five-class typology of male sexual offender and offence characteristics

University of British Columbia

The present study sought to replicate existing research in order to evaluate the similarities between distinct samples of sexual offenders. The research also sought to use a more advanced statistical procedure than previous research to derive a typology and see how it fit within the framework of existing literature. Data were gathered from 106 pre-sentence reports assessing adult male sexual offenders. Prior research examining typologies of adolescent male sexual offenders and adult female sexual offenders were replicated and compared to the collected data. Some similarities between the adolescent male and adult male sexual offenders were found, such as a relationship between type of offender and recidivism risk. The adult female and adult male sexual offenders had a differing number of sub-types, but offender age and victim age differentiated between the groups for both samples. Following replication, latent class analysis was used to uncover naturally occurring groups in the collected data using offender and offence characteristics. The analyses revealed five classes of offenders, which were labelled Mixed Victim Assaulters, Non-Pedophilic Mixed Gender Offenders, Preferential Pedophiles, Non-Aggressive Incest Offenders, and Non-Aggressive Non-Pedophilic Child Molesters. Of the eight variables selected for the analyses, the classes varied mainly in the areas of presence of pedophilia, presence of a substance/alcohol disorder, use of aggression, victim gender, victim age, and victim relationship. Sexual victimization history and offender age did not provide much class differentiation. External analyses revealed that among the classes, ethnicity, presence of a mood/anxiety disorder, and presence of a personality disorder differed. The classes involving child-oriented offences supported existing typologies in the literature, whereas the class involving adult-oriented offences did not align with existing typologies. A typology rooted in empirical findings, such as the typology developed for this research, can provide significant insight into the heterogeneous nature of those who commit sexual offences. This insight can allow researchers and clinicians to best assess, treat, and reintegrate sexual offenders, as the offenders may require different preventive techniques and have different treatment needs based on their class characteristics.

Text

2016-06-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/58309

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/