Post-conviction polygraph testing during sex offender (PCSOT) treatment is common. Ocular-motor deception testing (ODT) uses measures of cognitive load to assess credibility. The accuracy of ODT for discriminating deceptive from truthful response patterns in sexually violent persons was evaluated. Participants chose to 'steal' a voucher of…

Numerous scholars have called for young adult literature (YAL) to be a pedagogical avenue for educating secondary and postsecondary students about sexual violence, who are often socialized into harmful beliefs about victims. In this study, we draw on Manne's theorizing of "himpathy" and "herasure" to explore the ways in which…

Background: The Questionnaire on Attitudes Consistent with Sexual Offending (QACSO) is an assessment developed by Lindsay, Whitefield, Carson, Broxholme and Steptoe (2004). The QACSO was designed to assess cognitive distortions relating to sexual offending in males with intellectual disabilities (ID). Cognitive distortions form part of the offence…

Background: The Armidilo has two scales--the risk scale and the protective scale. Research has been confined to the risk scale which appears to predict future incidents with medium to large effect sizes. There have been no publications on the use of the protective scale. Methods: The Armidilo was completed on four individuals with IDD who were…

This article provides a case study of deceptive online identity performance by a convicted child sex offender. Most prior linguistic and psychological research into online sexual abuse analyses transcripts involving adult decoys posing as children. In contrast, our data comprise genuine online conversations between the offender and 20 victims.…

In this article, the authors discuss the pathways to sexual offenses, risk factors, treatment, and unique ethical challenges inherent in working with students who have a history of sexual offending behavior or exhibit risk factors for such behavior. We also address unique clinical competencies and knowledge and provide recommendations for…

Risk reduction is traditionally understood as any programming that teaches potential victims how to protect themselves from an assault. In short, risk reduction educates potential victims and suggests they modify their behaviors in order to increase their own safety. But that programming focus is precisely why risk reduction is largely absent from…

This article uses a research project into the online conversations of sex offenders and the children they abuse to further the arguments for the acceptability of experimental work as a research tool for linguists. The research reported here contributes to the growing body of work within linguistics that has found experimental methods to be useful…

A self-report questionnaire about past criminal behavior is presented here as a useful pedagogical tool to demonstrate the invalidity of crime rates, challenge stereotypes about criminals, exemplify policy problems, and personalize the ways in which race, gender, and class operate to disadvantage and advantage people in the administration of…

An emerging literature on autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and offending has highlighted that these disorders are at times associated with criminal behaviour. Ghaziuddin et al. (1991) reviewed the published literature on this topic from 1944 to 1990 and concluded that there was no clear link between Asperger syndrome (AS) and violent crime. They…

Circumstances under which a sexual assault takes place and how these circumstances affect offenders' reactions to victim resistance are not well understood. Previous studies have not thoroughly examined the interactions that take place between situational factors and resistance. Using a combination of logistic regression and Chi-square Automatic…

Sex offender management is one of the highest-profile issues in public safety today. Although states have enacted community notification laws as a means to protect communities from sexual offending, limited research has been conducted to examine the impact of these laws on public safety. As such, this study used a quasi-experimental design to…

Many studies in the sexual assault literature have found a significant relationship between sexual assault severity and psychological distress, specifically PTSD and suicidality. However, in the current literature, there is an inconsistent and incomplete definition of the construct of assault severity. The present study aims to create a…

Many municipalities have recently extended residence restrictions for sex offenders beyond the provisions of state law, although the efficacy of these measures in reducing recidivism has not been empirically established. This study used arrest histories in Jacksonville, Florida, to assess the effects of a recently expanded municipal 2,500-foot…

Residence restrictions seek to protect community members from registered sex offenders (RSOs) reentering society following incarceration. These policies, first passed in 1995 at the state level and in 2005 at the county and local levels, have become extremely popular throughout the United States but without proof that they are effective. To date,…