Researchers create new method to classify dangerous sex offenders

10-31-2016 Canada:

UBC researchers have developed a new classification system that could help police solve sex crimes.Using classified anonymous police case files and court records, researchers at UBC's Okanagan campus uncovered new subtypes of high-risk sexual offenders that could give police insight into the behaviour of convicted sex offenders who have been released into the community.

"These are offenders who have an extremely-high probability of reoffending, but they have timed-out of the system and are released," says Kimberly Kaseweter, a PhD student at UBC. "A lot of people don't understand that these high-risk sexual offenders are often treated the same way as non-violent offenders, once released, in regards to community supervision and treatment."

Kaseweter, and UBC Okanagan psychology Professor Michael Woodworth, worked with former RCMP Staff Sergeant and psychologist Matt Logan, who helped facilitate access to the classified case files.

Using details from the crime scenes, Kaseweter and Woodworth used a statistical technique called Latent Class analyses to uncover three distinct groups of these offenders—coercive child molesters, sadistic rapists, and stranger-focused offenders.

The Adam Walsh Act: A False Sense of Security or an Effective Public Policy Initiative?

June 2009:

Abstract:
With the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA), states are required to standardize their registration and community notification practices by categorizing sex offenders into three-tier levels in the interest of increasing public safety. No empirical research, however, has investigated whether implementation of the AWA is likely to increase public safety. Using a sample of registered sex offenders in New York State, the current study examined the effectiveness of the Adam Walsh-tier system to classify offenders by likelihood of recidivism. Results indicated that the AWA falls short of increasing public safety. In fact, registered sex offenders classified by AWA as Tier 1 (lowest risk) were rearrested for both nonsexual and sexual offenses more than sex offenders in Tier 2 (moderate risk) or Tier 3 (highest risk). ..Source.. by Naomi J. Freeman, New York State Office of Mental Health, Albany -and- Jeffrey C. Sandler, University at Albany, New York

Worth noting from the Conclusion: The idea behind the enactment of the AWA, to standardize registration and notification procedures nationwide, appeared to address limitations of the current system. In reality, however, the three-tiered system, as outlined in SORNA, fails to increase the effectiveness of current registration and community notification practices. In fact, as indicated by the results of the current study, the system proposed in SORNA actually decreases the ability of states to predict which sex offenders will sexually reoffend and which ones will not.

More specifically, the use of almost any empirically based risk factor would yield more accurate predictions than the SORNA tier level, which is based solely on crime of conviction. Although no risk prediction system can accurately predict sexual recidivism 100% of the time, the results of the current study indicate that SORNA is almost completely ineffective at categorizing sex offenders based on risk of sexual recidivism. As such, it appears enactment of the AWA (and, therefore, SORNA) would not only cost states more money than they would lose if they were not to enact it, but also that such enactment would unlikely increase public safety.