Pathways to sexual dangerousness

This study focuses on the civil commitment of offenders designated as “sexually dangerous”. The participants are over 800 men convicted of sexual offenses and evaluated at the Massachusetts Treatment Center for sexually dangerous persons between 1959 and 1991. Previous work on this sample has identified that while versatility is common among sex offenders, child molesters are most likely to specialize in sexual offending (Harris et al 2009). In contrast, the present work focuses on the various trajectories to commitment which the series demonstrates, and uses latent trajectory modelling to explore this issue. Attention will be given to various theoretical approaches which may help to explain the results.