Sex Offender Risk Assessment: Current Limitations and Future Directions

Abstract

The determination of the likelihood of future sexual offense has become of vital importance. In determining the likelihood of sexual recidivism, previous studies have identified risk factors that can assist practitioners in reducing the likelihood for future offense. However, there are some limitations found in the application of dynamic factors in risk assessment. First, as sexual assault is multidimensional behavior displayed by a heterogeneous group of offenders, failure to identify all relevant risk factors and their limited influence on intervention leads into unsuccessful reduction of future offense. Second, as behavioral differences between subtypes of offenders have been identified, there is an urgent need of incorporating consideration of different types of sex offenders in risk assessment to improve the accuracy of decisions on sex offenders. Third, current behavioral measures in risk assessment fail to cover extensive range of offending behaviors that may be useful for understanding characteristics of each offender. Assessing risk of recidivism is important as it can help practitioners making decisions on trials and sentencing, institutional placement, offender supervision, offender treatments, and prison classification.