Sexual Offending and Desistance from Crime: The Role of Life Course Contextual Dynamic Factors

• In Event: Sexual Offending, Risk, Sexual Recidivism and the Life Course Outcomes

Abstract

Research has been focused on the identification and measurement of static and relatively fixed characteristics that are statistically associated with recidivism. A challenge, therefore, is to determine whether desistance related factors operate in the presence of known static and dynamic risk factors. Recently, there have been some major breakthroughs in terms of the identification of dynamic risk factors, but those have been focused on clinically relevant indicators. In that context, the study of social roles, opportunities, agency, and self-identity remain scarce. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore life course factors (e.g., social roles, self-identity) to study sex offender recidivism. The study is based on a prospective longitudinal study including data from a Canadian sample of 553 adults all convicted of a sexual offense. Survival analyses demonstrated that specific life course factors were significantly correlated to static risk (i.e., Static-99) highlighting the conceptual overlap between risk and desistance. When statistically adjusting for sociodemographic and static risk factors, life course factors were statistically predictive of recidivism and helped improve the identification of recidivists and non-recidivists. The findings will be discussed in light of the scientific literature on risk assessment and a call for more theoretical integration will be stressed.

Authors

• Arthur-Lou Baguet, Université Laval

• Patrick Lussier, Université Laval