What is it about?
Most risk factors for sexual reoffending have been identified by studying individuals with offline sexual offenses. We wanted to know if these risk factors would apply equally for men with child pornography offenses. We found factors assessed by the tools we examined (STABLE-2007 and ACUTE-2007) predicted reoffending among individuals with child pornography offenses. Consequently, these tools can provide valuable insights for assessing and treating individuals with child pornography offenses. Furthermore, the factors capture by these tools - such as capacity for relationship stability, emotional identification with children, and impulsivity- are critical focal points for the treatment of child pornography offenders.
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Why is it important?
Risk assessment is essential to effective correctional practice. Many risk tools have been created for individuals with offline sexual offenses. However, for individuals whose sexual offending exclusively involves child pornography, no risk tools with changeable risk factors (that could be targeted in treatment) exist. Our findings indicate that that changeable risk factors, as assessed by the STABLE-2007 and ACUTE-2007, are applicable for child pornography offenders. In other words, both online and offline sex offenders share many of the same risk-relevant psychological and community adjustment problems.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure and a long time coming. My colleagues and I have often been asked if changeable (dynamic) factors predict equally for men with child pornography offenses and whether we can use dynamic tools on this population. Finally, in this article, we were finally able to answer their questions (the answer is yes, at least for the tools we examined and in our population: men charged or convicted for a child pornography offense). This article is also the first peer-reviewed publication for two of my co-authors, S. Dibayula and C. McCulloch, who were undergraduate students in my lab in 2022.
Kelly Babchishin
Carleton University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ACUTE-2007 and STABLE-2007 predict recidivism for men adjudicated for child sexual exploitation material offending., Law and Human Behavior, August 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000540.
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