International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2020
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offen... more Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offenders and tended to minimize the public costs associated with crime. Drawing on expanded monetization estimates produced by Cohen and Piquero, this study assessed the monetary costs for five crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary) imposed by a sample of (n 654) convicted and incarcerated murderers. The average cost per murder exceeded $17.25 million and the average murderer in the current sample posed costs approaching $24 million. The most violent and prolific offenders singly produced costs greater than $150–160 million in terms of victim costs, criminal justice costs, lost offender productivity, and public willingness-to-pay costs.
The general psychopathology general theory or p Factor is an influential theoretical development ... more The general psychopathology general theory or p Factor is an influential theoretical development in the social and behavioral sciences, but has yet to gain traction in criminology and criminal justice. Drawing on data from a sample of 1722 federal pretrial defendants, we created a 22-item composite indicator or additive index of the p Factor containing externalizing, internalizing, substance use, paraphilic, and forensic indicators. Negative binomial regression models found that age, sex, and diverse forms of trauma exposure are associated with higher p Factor scores. Higher p scores strongly predicted total, violent, sexual, property, weapon, and drug arrest charges net the effects of demographic features and adverse childhood experiences. There is broad heterogeneity in psychopathology within this sample with nearly 29% of clients exhibiting zero psychopathology, nearly 61% showing average psychopathology or less, and nearly 40% evincing average to exceedingly high psychopathology. As a general theory, the p Factor has considerable potential to inform the assorted morbidities that often accompany criminal activity, including self-harm, reduced global functioning, substance use, and social dysfunction and thus is a parsimonious conceptual framework to understand the overlapping and systemic personal problems that typify chronic and serious criminal offenders.
Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2021
Correctional clients frequently have extensive trauma and abuse experiences and the adverse child... more Correctional clients frequently have extensive trauma and abuse experiences and the adverse childhood experiences framework is increasingly influential in the criminological and forensic sciences. Unfortunately, most measurement involves binary measures that fail to capture the complexity of this abuse. Using a population of federal offenders who ever perpetrated a sexual offense, the current study introduced new measures of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and incest abuse that included ordinal-scale measures of the frequency, chronicity, and severity of these experiences. Descriptive, correlational, and ROC-AUC models indicated that the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences depends on its measurement with some clients experiencing frequent and severe abuse across years. Adverse childhood experiences significantly correlated with multiple measures of criminal onset and sexual offending and had excellent classification accuracy for behavioral disorders especially Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD). We encourage further measurement development of adverse childhood experiences so that the ecological validity of research is commensurate with the trauma experiences of offenders who commit sexual crimes.
Abstract Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology esp... more Abstract Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology especially the confluence of psychopathy, multiple externalizing behaviors, and homicidality. Here, we present a forensic case report of Mr. Z, an offender whose antisocial conduct and criminal justice system involvement spans the late 1940s to the present, whose criminal career dovetails with significant events in correctional history in the United States in the middle to late 20th century, and who was a multiple homicide offender while incarcerated in both state and federal prisons. The case report method provides rich qualitative data to supplement quantitative findings on psychopathy, career criminals, the severe 5%, and life-course-persistent offender prototypes. Given the extraordinary behaviors and psychopathology of the most severe offenders, forensic case reports are useful to refine criminological theory and research, and inform correctional practice.
Studies of the dark figure of sexual offending using federal correctional clients reported signif... more Studies of the dark figure of sexual offending using federal correctional clients reported significant evidence of previously unknown or hidden sexual violence, often among clients with no official criminal history. Unfortunately, research has produced variable estimates of how large the dark figure is. The current study sought to replicate recent studies of federal sexual offenders about the dark figure of sexual offending. We also extended the knowledge base by providing additional correlational analyses to see whether self-reported and official sexual offending have shared or divergent correlates. Overall, 73.8% of federal sexual offenders reported prior contact victims, which is higher than, but generally consistent with, prior prevalence estimates of 55-69% in studies of federal correctional clients. In the current data, clients convicted of child pornography possession or receipt and who had no official record of sexual abuse nevertheless reported contact sexual offenses in more than 59% of cases.
International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2017
ABSTRACT Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is a relatively rare psychiatric condition charact... more ABSTRACT Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is a relatively rare psychiatric condition characterized by aggression, explosive outbursts towards people and property, and very poorly regulated emotional and behavioral control, but has rarely been studied in a criminal justice context. Drawing on data from 863 federal correctional clients from a supervised release population in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined the lifetime prevalence and correlates of IED and its associations with criminal careers. The lifetime prevalence of IED was 2.6% with another 1% of clients exhibiting symptoms of the disorder. Poisson and negative binomial regression models have shown that IED was significantly associated with arrests for murder, attempted murder, interference with police, aggravated assault, simple assault, and domestic assault despite controls for serious behavioral disorders, age of first arrest, and demographics. Clients with IED were also dramatically more likely to be habitual offenders and accumulate chronic arrests for assault-related crimes. These offenders pose considerable risk to staff safety and should be supervised with the highest level of supervision.
Institutional misconduct has criminogenic implications, whereas visitation, work, and educational... more Institutional misconduct has criminogenic implications, whereas visitation, work, and educational involvement have desistance implications, but there is considerable heterogeneity in the inmate population and in the effects of institutional experiences and various programming on their immediate and postrelease behavior. Using a near population of offenders on federal supervised release, the current study examined the effects of criminogenic (e.g., misconduct) and desistance-promoting (e.g., work, education, and visitation) factors occurring within prison along with the effects of importation factors (e.g., arrest onset, federal criminal history rank, and demographics) in relation to functioning/compliance on supervised release. Institutional misconduct and specifically drug/alcohol misconduct reduced postrelease functioning/compliance, while the effects for visitation were limited. Prison work and educational experiences had no effect on supervised release outcomes. The most consist...
Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) requires a childhood diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD); h... more Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) requires a childhood diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD); however, some adult offenders are nevertheless diagnosed with ASPD without antecedent CD. The current study used a population of federal correctional clients to examine psychiatric and paraphilic conditions that potentially differentiate these offenders. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was associated with a 120% increased likelihood of ASPD with prior CD, but a 75% reduced likelihood of ASPD without CD. Bipolar I disorder was associated with a 328% increased likelihood, frotteurism conferred a 311% increased likelihood, and sexual sadism conferred a 1,033% increased likelihood of ASPD without CD. The findings provide specificity to the heterogeneous ASPD population and help to clarify its equifinality. Implications for correctional practice are that prior psychiatric diagnoses and paraphilic disorders can help to understand the development of serious criminal behavior occu...
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is a severe personality disorder with robust associations ... more Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is a severe personality disorder with robust associations with crime and violence, but its precise etiology is unknown. Drawing on near-population of federal correctional clients in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined antecedent background factors spanning adverse childhood experiences and childhood psychopathology. Greater adverse childhood experiences were associated with ASPD diagnosis with physical abuse showing associations with ASPD symptoms and sexual abuse with lifetime diagnosis for ASPD. Conduct Disorder was strongly linked to ASPD; however, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and ADHD had null associations. Given the role of environmental factors in the development of ASPD, greater criminological attention should be devoted to understanding how assorted forms of abuse and neglect coupled with childhood psychopathology contribute to ASPD especially given its linkages to severe criminal offending.
Household drug abuse is one of the seminal forms of adverse childhood experiences, but it does no... more Household drug abuse is one of the seminal forms of adverse childhood experiences, but it does not fully capture the severity of parents that actively provide or even administer drugs to their children. Drawing on a near population of federal supervised release offenders, the current study examined this “new” adverse childhood experience and its association with antisociality. Multiple analytical techniques (e.g., correlation, binary and multinomial logistic regression, and negative binomial regression) indicated that parent exposure to drugs was significantly associated with current drug status while on supervision, three forms of drug offending, and Cannabis, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Opiate, and Alcohol Dependence even while controlling for age of arrest onset, sex, race, and current age. We concur with other scholars that more conceptualization and measurement-refinement of adverse childhood experiences is needed to fully understand how early-life trauma shapes the contours of t...
PurposeHomicide is the most severe form of crime and one that imposes the greatest societal costs... more PurposeHomicide is the most severe form of crime and one that imposes the greatest societal costs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the homicide circumplex, a set of traits, behaviors, psychological and psychiatric features that are associated with greater homicidal ideation, homicidal social cognitive biases, homicide offending and victimization, and psychopathology that is facilitative of homicide.Design/methodology/approachUsing the data from a near population of federal supervised release offenders from the Midwestern USA, ANOVA, multinomial logistic, Poisson and negative binomial regression models were developed.FindingsGreater homicidal ideation is associated with homicide offending, attempted homicide offending and attempted homicide victimization and predicted by gang activity, alias usage, antisocial personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder. These behavioral disorders, more extensive criminal careers, African American status and gang activity also e...
Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 2017
Purpose Sexual sadism is a well-known risk factor for severe forms of sexual violence including s... more Purpose Sexual sadism is a well-known risk factor for severe forms of sexual violence including sexual homicide and serial sexual homicide. The research is decidedly mixed about the association between sexual sadism and other, nonsexual forms of criminal conduct. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on data from a census of 225 federal sex offenders from a jurisdiction in the Midwestern USA, the current study examined whether sexual sadism had a spillover effect into nonsexual crimes using correlation, ANOVA, and negative binomial regression models. Findings Sexual sadism was strongly associated with diverse forms of nonsexual criminal behavior, and sexual sadists had more extensive and versatile criminal careers than sex offenders without a formal diagnosis. Practical implications Practitioners should be aware of sexual sadism as a criminogenic risk factor. Sexual sadism is associated with sexual deviance and sexual violence. Sexual sadism als...
Purpose Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social scien... more Purpose Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social sciences that have only recently been studied within criminology. The purpose of this paper is to utilize this framework by applying it to one of the most potentially dangerous forensic populations. Design/methodology/approach Archival data from 225 federal sex offenders was used to perform descriptive, correlational, and negative binomial regression models. Findings There was substantial evidence of ACEs including father abandonment/neglect (36 percent), physical abuse (nearly 28 percent), verbal/emotional abuse (more than 24 percent), and sexual abuse (approximately 27 percent). The mean age of sexual victimization was 7.6 years with the youngest age of victimization occurring at the age of 3. Offenders averaged nearly five paraphilias, the most common were pedophilia (57 percent), pornography addiction (43 percent), paraphilia not otherwise specified (35 percent), exhibitionism (26 percent...
Background Little is known about the institutional behaviour of incarcerated sex offenders. Aim T... more Background Little is known about the institutional behaviour of incarcerated sex offenders. Aim To study the relationships between juvenile sex offending, thought psychopathology and institutional misconduct. Method We applied negative binomial regression and Area Under Curve Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC-ROC) analyses to self-report and records data from institutionalised delinquents (N = 813) committed to the California Youth Authority to explore the links between sex offending and institutional misconduct, controlling for offender demographics, institution, index offence, and self-reported and offi cial criminal history. Results Juvenile sex offending was associated with six forms of institutional misconduct (sexual, general and total misconduct as reviewed by parole board) over 12 and 24 months prior to rating. Two measures of thought psychopathology, which were related to psychosis-like thought, were signifi cantly associated with juvenile sex offender status. These constructs did not, however, mediate the independent predictive effects of adolescent sex offending on institutional misconduct. Conclusion Interventions to help incarcerated young offenders are likely to be particularly important for those with a sex offending history as they are otherwise likely to persist with antisocial behaviours of all kinds within and beyond the institution. Attention to their thought processes may be particularly useful.
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 2021
Protective factors facilitate success on community supervision, but relatively little is known ab... more Protective factors facilitate success on community supervision, but relatively little is known about correctional clients who are highly compliant particularly in the federal system. Drawing on a near population of federal clients on supervised release in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined variables associated with compliant supervision status. One day on supervision contributed to a 1% reduction in the logged odds of supervision compliance. Clients with no drug history had 793% increased odds, clients with sustained remission had 620% increased odds, and clients with early remission had 458% increased odds of compliant supervision status relative to clients actively using drugs. Among the federal Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA) indices, only PCRA Criminal History was significant as clients with less extensive criminal history were more likely to be compliant supervision clients. A one-unit change in PCRA Criminal History status was associated with 25% r...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2020
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offen... more Prior research on the monetary costs of criminal careers has neglected to focus on homicide offenders and tended to minimize the public costs associated with crime. Drawing on expanded monetization estimates produced by Cohen and Piquero, this study assessed the monetary costs for five crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and burglary) imposed by a sample of (n 654) convicted and incarcerated murderers. The average cost per murder exceeded $17.25 million and the average murderer in the current sample posed costs approaching $24 million. The most violent and prolific offenders singly produced costs greater than $150–160 million in terms of victim costs, criminal justice costs, lost offender productivity, and public willingness-to-pay costs.
The general psychopathology general theory or p Factor is an influential theoretical development ... more The general psychopathology general theory or p Factor is an influential theoretical development in the social and behavioral sciences, but has yet to gain traction in criminology and criminal justice. Drawing on data from a sample of 1722 federal pretrial defendants, we created a 22-item composite indicator or additive index of the p Factor containing externalizing, internalizing, substance use, paraphilic, and forensic indicators. Negative binomial regression models found that age, sex, and diverse forms of trauma exposure are associated with higher p Factor scores. Higher p scores strongly predicted total, violent, sexual, property, weapon, and drug arrest charges net the effects of demographic features and adverse childhood experiences. There is broad heterogeneity in psychopathology within this sample with nearly 29% of clients exhibiting zero psychopathology, nearly 61% showing average psychopathology or less, and nearly 40% evincing average to exceedingly high psychopathology. As a general theory, the p Factor has considerable potential to inform the assorted morbidities that often accompany criminal activity, including self-harm, reduced global functioning, substance use, and social dysfunction and thus is a parsimonious conceptual framework to understand the overlapping and systemic personal problems that typify chronic and serious criminal offenders.
Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2021
Correctional clients frequently have extensive trauma and abuse experiences and the adverse child... more Correctional clients frequently have extensive trauma and abuse experiences and the adverse childhood experiences framework is increasingly influential in the criminological and forensic sciences. Unfortunately, most measurement involves binary measures that fail to capture the complexity of this abuse. Using a population of federal offenders who ever perpetrated a sexual offense, the current study introduced new measures of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and incest abuse that included ordinal-scale measures of the frequency, chronicity, and severity of these experiences. Descriptive, correlational, and ROC-AUC models indicated that the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences depends on its measurement with some clients experiencing frequent and severe abuse across years. Adverse childhood experiences significantly correlated with multiple measures of criminal onset and sexual offending and had excellent classification accuracy for behavioral disorders especially Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD). We encourage further measurement development of adverse childhood experiences so that the ecological validity of research is commensurate with the trauma experiences of offenders who commit sexual crimes.
Abstract Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology esp... more Abstract Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology especially the confluence of psychopathy, multiple externalizing behaviors, and homicidality. Here, we present a forensic case report of Mr. Z, an offender whose antisocial conduct and criminal justice system involvement spans the late 1940s to the present, whose criminal career dovetails with significant events in correctional history in the United States in the middle to late 20th century, and who was a multiple homicide offender while incarcerated in both state and federal prisons. The case report method provides rich qualitative data to supplement quantitative findings on psychopathy, career criminals, the severe 5%, and life-course-persistent offender prototypes. Given the extraordinary behaviors and psychopathology of the most severe offenders, forensic case reports are useful to refine criminological theory and research, and inform correctional practice.
Studies of the dark figure of sexual offending using federal correctional clients reported signif... more Studies of the dark figure of sexual offending using federal correctional clients reported significant evidence of previously unknown or hidden sexual violence, often among clients with no official criminal history. Unfortunately, research has produced variable estimates of how large the dark figure is. The current study sought to replicate recent studies of federal sexual offenders about the dark figure of sexual offending. We also extended the knowledge base by providing additional correlational analyses to see whether self-reported and official sexual offending have shared or divergent correlates. Overall, 73.8% of federal sexual offenders reported prior contact victims, which is higher than, but generally consistent with, prior prevalence estimates of 55-69% in studies of federal correctional clients. In the current data, clients convicted of child pornography possession or receipt and who had no official record of sexual abuse nevertheless reported contact sexual offenses in more than 59% of cases.
International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2017
ABSTRACT Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is a relatively rare psychiatric condition charact... more ABSTRACT Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is a relatively rare psychiatric condition characterized by aggression, explosive outbursts towards people and property, and very poorly regulated emotional and behavioral control, but has rarely been studied in a criminal justice context. Drawing on data from 863 federal correctional clients from a supervised release population in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined the lifetime prevalence and correlates of IED and its associations with criminal careers. The lifetime prevalence of IED was 2.6% with another 1% of clients exhibiting symptoms of the disorder. Poisson and negative binomial regression models have shown that IED was significantly associated with arrests for murder, attempted murder, interference with police, aggravated assault, simple assault, and domestic assault despite controls for serious behavioral disorders, age of first arrest, and demographics. Clients with IED were also dramatically more likely to be habitual offenders and accumulate chronic arrests for assault-related crimes. These offenders pose considerable risk to staff safety and should be supervised with the highest level of supervision.
Institutional misconduct has criminogenic implications, whereas visitation, work, and educational... more Institutional misconduct has criminogenic implications, whereas visitation, work, and educational involvement have desistance implications, but there is considerable heterogeneity in the inmate population and in the effects of institutional experiences and various programming on their immediate and postrelease behavior. Using a near population of offenders on federal supervised release, the current study examined the effects of criminogenic (e.g., misconduct) and desistance-promoting (e.g., work, education, and visitation) factors occurring within prison along with the effects of importation factors (e.g., arrest onset, federal criminal history rank, and demographics) in relation to functioning/compliance on supervised release. Institutional misconduct and specifically drug/alcohol misconduct reduced postrelease functioning/compliance, while the effects for visitation were limited. Prison work and educational experiences had no effect on supervised release outcomes. The most consist...
Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) requires a childhood diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD); h... more Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) requires a childhood diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD); however, some adult offenders are nevertheless diagnosed with ASPD without antecedent CD. The current study used a population of federal correctional clients to examine psychiatric and paraphilic conditions that potentially differentiate these offenders. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was associated with a 120% increased likelihood of ASPD with prior CD, but a 75% reduced likelihood of ASPD without CD. Bipolar I disorder was associated with a 328% increased likelihood, frotteurism conferred a 311% increased likelihood, and sexual sadism conferred a 1,033% increased likelihood of ASPD without CD. The findings provide specificity to the heterogeneous ASPD population and help to clarify its equifinality. Implications for correctional practice are that prior psychiatric diagnoses and paraphilic disorders can help to understand the development of serious criminal behavior occu...
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is a severe personality disorder with robust associations ... more Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is a severe personality disorder with robust associations with crime and violence, but its precise etiology is unknown. Drawing on near-population of federal correctional clients in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined antecedent background factors spanning adverse childhood experiences and childhood psychopathology. Greater adverse childhood experiences were associated with ASPD diagnosis with physical abuse showing associations with ASPD symptoms and sexual abuse with lifetime diagnosis for ASPD. Conduct Disorder was strongly linked to ASPD; however, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and ADHD had null associations. Given the role of environmental factors in the development of ASPD, greater criminological attention should be devoted to understanding how assorted forms of abuse and neglect coupled with childhood psychopathology contribute to ASPD especially given its linkages to severe criminal offending.
Household drug abuse is one of the seminal forms of adverse childhood experiences, but it does no... more Household drug abuse is one of the seminal forms of adverse childhood experiences, but it does not fully capture the severity of parents that actively provide or even administer drugs to their children. Drawing on a near population of federal supervised release offenders, the current study examined this “new” adverse childhood experience and its association with antisociality. Multiple analytical techniques (e.g., correlation, binary and multinomial logistic regression, and negative binomial regression) indicated that parent exposure to drugs was significantly associated with current drug status while on supervision, three forms of drug offending, and Cannabis, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Opiate, and Alcohol Dependence even while controlling for age of arrest onset, sex, race, and current age. We concur with other scholars that more conceptualization and measurement-refinement of adverse childhood experiences is needed to fully understand how early-life trauma shapes the contours of t...
PurposeHomicide is the most severe form of crime and one that imposes the greatest societal costs... more PurposeHomicide is the most severe form of crime and one that imposes the greatest societal costs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the homicide circumplex, a set of traits, behaviors, psychological and psychiatric features that are associated with greater homicidal ideation, homicidal social cognitive biases, homicide offending and victimization, and psychopathology that is facilitative of homicide.Design/methodology/approachUsing the data from a near population of federal supervised release offenders from the Midwestern USA, ANOVA, multinomial logistic, Poisson and negative binomial regression models were developed.FindingsGreater homicidal ideation is associated with homicide offending, attempted homicide offending and attempted homicide victimization and predicted by gang activity, alias usage, antisocial personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder. These behavioral disorders, more extensive criminal careers, African American status and gang activity also e...
Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 2017
Purpose Sexual sadism is a well-known risk factor for severe forms of sexual violence including s... more Purpose Sexual sadism is a well-known risk factor for severe forms of sexual violence including sexual homicide and serial sexual homicide. The research is decidedly mixed about the association between sexual sadism and other, nonsexual forms of criminal conduct. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on data from a census of 225 federal sex offenders from a jurisdiction in the Midwestern USA, the current study examined whether sexual sadism had a spillover effect into nonsexual crimes using correlation, ANOVA, and negative binomial regression models. Findings Sexual sadism was strongly associated with diverse forms of nonsexual criminal behavior, and sexual sadists had more extensive and versatile criminal careers than sex offenders without a formal diagnosis. Practical implications Practitioners should be aware of sexual sadism as a criminogenic risk factor. Sexual sadism is associated with sexual deviance and sexual violence. Sexual sadism als...
Purpose Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social scien... more Purpose Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a broad conceptual framework in the social sciences that have only recently been studied within criminology. The purpose of this paper is to utilize this framework by applying it to one of the most potentially dangerous forensic populations. Design/methodology/approach Archival data from 225 federal sex offenders was used to perform descriptive, correlational, and negative binomial regression models. Findings There was substantial evidence of ACEs including father abandonment/neglect (36 percent), physical abuse (nearly 28 percent), verbal/emotional abuse (more than 24 percent), and sexual abuse (approximately 27 percent). The mean age of sexual victimization was 7.6 years with the youngest age of victimization occurring at the age of 3. Offenders averaged nearly five paraphilias, the most common were pedophilia (57 percent), pornography addiction (43 percent), paraphilia not otherwise specified (35 percent), exhibitionism (26 percent...
Background Little is known about the institutional behaviour of incarcerated sex offenders. Aim T... more Background Little is known about the institutional behaviour of incarcerated sex offenders. Aim To study the relationships between juvenile sex offending, thought psychopathology and institutional misconduct. Method We applied negative binomial regression and Area Under Curve Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC-ROC) analyses to self-report and records data from institutionalised delinquents (N = 813) committed to the California Youth Authority to explore the links between sex offending and institutional misconduct, controlling for offender demographics, institution, index offence, and self-reported and offi cial criminal history. Results Juvenile sex offending was associated with six forms of institutional misconduct (sexual, general and total misconduct as reviewed by parole board) over 12 and 24 months prior to rating. Two measures of thought psychopathology, which were related to psychosis-like thought, were signifi cantly associated with juvenile sex offender status. These constructs did not, however, mediate the independent predictive effects of adolescent sex offending on institutional misconduct. Conclusion Interventions to help incarcerated young offenders are likely to be particularly important for those with a sex offending history as they are otherwise likely to persist with antisocial behaviours of all kinds within and beyond the institution. Attention to their thought processes may be particularly useful.
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 2021
Protective factors facilitate success on community supervision, but relatively little is known ab... more Protective factors facilitate success on community supervision, but relatively little is known about correctional clients who are highly compliant particularly in the federal system. Drawing on a near population of federal clients on supervised release in the Midwestern United States, the current study examined variables associated with compliant supervision status. One day on supervision contributed to a 1% reduction in the logged odds of supervision compliance. Clients with no drug history had 793% increased odds, clients with sustained remission had 620% increased odds, and clients with early remission had 458% increased odds of compliant supervision status relative to clients actively using drugs. Among the federal Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA) indices, only PCRA Criminal History was significant as clients with less extensive criminal history were more likely to be compliant supervision clients. A one-unit change in PCRA Criminal History status was associated with 25% r...
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