What ends sexual offending? A scoping review on psychological and interpersonal protective factors

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Although most offenders who have committed a sex crime will not re-offend, an excessive amount of attention is paid to the process that will lead a minority to a new offense. What, then, are the protective factors that contribute to the absence of recidivism among most of these sex offenders? Not only listing these factors could benefit the research field of sexual offending by establishing what works but also, the clinical field by providing empirically validated factors to work on in the reintegration of sexual offenders in the community. This scoping review therefore aims to provide such a list of protective factors by overviewing the state of the current literature on desistance and the protective factors in the field of sexual offending. From a database of 6556 scientific articles, 26 were retained for the present study. Through thematic analysis, findings highlight that the selected studies conceptualize desistance differently and that this conceptual choice impacts the protective factors revealed.

Authors

• Etienne Garant, Université de Montréal

• Frédéric Ouellet, Université de Montréal