“Once a sex offender, always a sex offender?”Claire Hargreaves – c.hargreaves1@lancaster.ac.uk Professor Brian Francis – asabjf@exchange.lancs.ac.ukDepartment of Mathematics and StatisticsLancaster University

European Society of Criminology, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2011

Sexual Offenders

•Sexual offending is a major concern.

•Should a sex offender always be labelled a sex offender?

•Sex Offender Registration

Sex Offender Registration• United Kingdom – Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR)

• Australia – Australian National Child Offender Register (ANCOR)

• Canada – National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR)

• United States of America – All 50 states have passed laws requiring sex offenders to register with police.

Previous Research• Kurlychek, Brame and Bushway (2007)

▫ “if a person with a criminal record remains crime free for a period of about 7 years, his or her risk of a new offence is similar to that of a person without any criminal record” (2007:80)

• Soothill and Francis (2009)▫ Risk of a further conviction comes close to the non-offending

population 10 to 15 years after their 20th birthday.

• Blumstein and Nakamura (2009)

• Bushway, Nieuwbeerta and Blokland (2011)

My Research• Examining the criminal careers of convicted

male sexual offenders, concentrating primarily on their desistance from sexual offending.▫Although desistance can never truly be

measured an offender’s risk of recidivism can be.

• Establish when a convicted sexual offender has the same or similar risk of being convicted of a further sexual offence as the never convicted population.

Data• The Offenders Index is held by the Ministry of Justice.

The database holds conviction histories on over 10 million offenders from courts in England and Wales from 1963 to 2008.

• The birth cohort data sets are publicly available, and contain conviction histories for offenders in eight birth cohorts: 1953, 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983 and 1988. The datasets are each samples of four birth weeks.

• Male offenders make up 94% of all convicted sexual offenders

Exploratory Analysis

•In total there are 62,552 offenders from the eight cohorts, with a total of 445,680 convictions.

 •3.7% of all convicted offenders were

convicted of a sexual offence •Just under half of all convicted sex

offenders had more than one sex conviction

Methodology• Re-conviction of

▫Any offence▫Sexual offence

• Convicted offenders analysed▫Sex Offenders▫Burglary Offenders▫All Offenders

• Control group▫Never convicted population

Methodology•Hazard estimate of re-conviction

•Offenders with a first conviction before the age of 21

•Time to conviction from age 21

•Life table analysis

•Convergence of hazard rates

Initial Analysis

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35.00

.05

.10

.15

.20

.25

.30

.35

Risk of a conviction from age 21

Convicted Sex OffendersConvicted Burglary OffendersConvicted OffendersNever Convicted Population

Interval Time YEARS

Haza

rd R

ate

Initial Analysis

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35.0000

.0050

.0100

.0150

.0200

.0250

Risk of a sex conviction from age 21

Convicted Sex OffendersConvicted OffendersNever Convicted Population

Interval Time YEARS

Haza

rd R

ate

Convergence of hazard rates

Risk of ANY conviction from age 21Time in years until hazard rates converge (AIC)

Never Convicted Population

Sex Offenders 14

Burglary Offenders

24

All Offenders 33

Convergence of hazard rates

Discussion• So when does a convicted sexual offender have the same or

similar risk of being convicted of a further sexual offence as the never convicted population?

• Convicted sex offenders have a similar risk of receiving a sex conviction as the never convicted population at the age of 46.

• Convicted sex offenders do not appear to pose a more significant risk than any other type of offender of being convicted of any offence.

• What does this mean for policy makers and authorities?

• Why should sex offenders continue to be ostracised?

Ongoing Work

•Analysis on individual age groups•Period at risk •Limited number of risk factors•Sub categories of sexual offenders

•Norwegian crime data▫Rich content▫Potential risk factors (Employment,

education, marriage, fatherhood)

References• Blumstein, A. and K. Nakamura, (2009) "Redemption in the Presence of

Widespread Criminal Background Checks," Criminology Volume.47, No.2, (May).

• Bushway, S., Nieuwbeerta, P. and Blockland, A. (2011) “The predictive value of criminal background checks: Do age and criminal history affect time to redemption?” Criminology, Volume.49, No.1

• Francis, B. And Soothill, K. (2010) “Retention and disclosure of old criminal records – data protection or protecting the public?” Presentation given at the Royal Statistical Society International Conference.

• Kurlychek, M. C., Brame, R. and Bushway, S. (2007) “Enduring Risk: Old Criminal Records and Prediction of Future Criminal Involvement.” Crime and Delinquency. Volume.53, No.1.

• Soothill, K. and Francis, B. (2009) “When do Ex-Offenders Become Like Non-Offenders?” The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume.48: 373–387.