Forensic Psychology For Dummies (139 page)

Assessing Sexual Offenders

In order to provide the most effective treatment
(intervention)
for offenders, psychologists explore their characteristics and aspects of their background relevant to their crimes. As with the assessment of violent offenders (which I discuss in Chapter 14), such assessments deal with static and dynamic factors:

Static factors
relate to the fixed aspects of a person, who they are and their offending history. These factors are most useful in estimating the probability that a person may re-offend in the future.

Dynamic factors
relate to the person’s interests, attitudes and personality. These factors are particularly useful in determining appropriate treatment programmes, as I describe in the later section, ‘Treating Sexual Offenders’.

In this section, I examine the assessment of sexual offenders, including risk assessment, and take a closer look at particular issues surrounding rape.

Considering the risk of future offending

A number of standard procedures have been developed for assessing the risk of future sexual offending, almost invariably used with male offenders even though women do commit sexual assaults, which is a crucial aspect of any consideration of what to do with a convicted offender. I summarise two of the most widely used in this section.

Static-2002

This procedure deals with those aspects of a person not open to change, essentially their offending history:

Age at which to be released.

Number of times previously sentenced for sexual offences.

Any arrests as a juvenile for sexual offence with an adult conviction.

High rate of sexual offending.

Any convictions for non-contact sexual offences.

Any male victims.

Two or more victims under the age of 12.

Any strangers as victims.

Any breach of conditional release.

Any convictions for non-sexual offences.