Changing patterns of sex offender specialization and recidivism

Both psychiatry and psychology tend to individualise social problems and regard the source of the problems for the individual as usually wrapped in some form of psychopathology which certainly cannot explain why there are significant variations in rates of sex offending over time and between societies. While more work still needs to be done in relation to the issues raised by the discipline of psychology, there should not be simply more of the same. In a recent review-paper Soothill has advocated a paradigm shift, so that system changes at the societal level are considered as much as behavioural changes at the individual level. Sadly, the data which might help to explain fully changes and variations in sexual offending do not exist, but cohort studies do help in providing evidence of change over time. The Home Office has developed a unique set of comparable datasets The Offenders Index Cohorts consist of six datasets. These data sets contain the complete criminal records as found on the Offenders Index for all offenders with a date of birth falling in four pre-selected weeks of the years 1953, 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973 and 1978, giving an approximate one-thirteenth sample of the population of offenders. Convictions on the Offenders Index go back to 1963 and so, with the age of criminal responsibility being 10 years, the full range of the ‘official’ criminal career is captured for all offenders in the six cohorts up to 1999. This chapter will focus on all convictions for sex offending within the six datasets. The focus will be on changes in terms of the patterning of sexual offence histories, which have taken place. The focus will be on specialisation and difficult task of determining age, period and cohort effects will be undertaken. The analysis will provide evidence for some theorising about the extent one should appeal to behavioural or system changes to explain the changes in sex offending over time.