Author: Spohn, Ryan
Title: Nebraska Sex Offender Registry Study – Final Report July 31, 2013
Summary: The Consortium for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Nebraska Omaha was charged by the Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee to undertake a study of the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry. The primary goal of the study was to compare sex offender recidivism under the pre-LB 285 classification system that utilized risk levels derived from a psychological risk assessment instrument to sex offender recidivism under the post-LB 285 classification system utilizing Adam Walsh Act Tier Levels derived from offense severity. Additional goals include an overall examination of offender characteristics, victim characteristics, and offense characteristics among all individuals on the registry, as well as the relationship of these offender, victim, and offense characteristics with recidivism. Methods: Data for the project was collected from three sources: 1) Nebraska’s Sex Offender Registry database, 2) the Nebraska State Patrol Criminal History Database (PCH), and 3) an FBI nationwide criminal records search. Graduate research assistants from UNO’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice extracted relevant data from the Sex Offender Registry database and linked it to recidivism data from Nebraska’s PCH database and the FBI criminal records search. The resulting dataset was analyzed by Dr. Ryan Spohn using SPSS version 20. Major Results: Characteristics of offenders, victims, and offenses. The typical registered sex offender in Nebraska is a white male over the age of 26. The typical victim is a female acquaintance, age 12 to 17. By far, the most common type of offense was fondling. For both the pre-LB 285 risk-based classification system and the post-LB 285 tier system based on offense severity, the most common tier classification is Risk Level 3 or Tier 3, the most serious classification for each system. Although violence and/or a weapon were present in almost a quarter of the offenses, serious bodily injury was a rare event. Sex offense recidivism. In comparing the old risk-based system of classification to the new offense-based system of classification, the former risk-based system resulted in less overall recidivism. Specifically, the pre-LB 285 classification system resulted in a 2-year recidivism rate of 1.7% and a 1-year recidivism rate of 0.6%. In comparison, the post-LB 285 classification system resulted in a 2-year recidivism rate of 2.6% and a 1-year recidivism rate of 1.7%. We also examined the effectiveness of each classification system in identifying offenders at the highest risk to reoffend. In general, the former system that utilized a psychological risk assessment tool consistently distinguished offenders who were at a high, medium, and low risk to reoffend. In comparison, the AWA system was very effective in distinguishing those at a high risk to reoffend from medium and low risk offenders. However, the AWA classification system consistently failed to distinguish offenders at medium risk to recidivate from those at low risk to recidivate. Our findings suggest that, as an overall tool for identifying a nuanced risk to reoffend, the old risk-based system appears more effective. However, if the goal is simply to distinguish the highest risk offenders from everyone else, the Adam Walsh Act Tier system appears most effective. One caveat, however, is that this latter finding is in sharp contrast to published research on sex offenders in other states (Zgoba et al. 2012). Factors related to sex offender recidivism in Nebraska. Our analysis focused on characteristics of the offenders, victims, and offenses that were significantly related to reoffending. Regarding offender characteristics, male offenders were more likely to reoffend as compared to female offenders and offenders diagnosed with a personality disorder were more likely to reoffend. Regarding victim characteristics, rates of recidivism were significantly elevated if the victim was a family member or an acquaintance, with the latter more than doubling the likelihood of a new sex offense. Recidivism is also more likely if the victim was age 11 or under. The most salient characteristic of victims, however, is the sex of the victim, as rates of recidivism were substantially higher if the offense leading to registry involved both male and female victims. Finally, regarding characteristics of the offense, rates of recidivism were elevated if the offense included explicit material or fondling, with the latter displaying the strongest relationship to subsequent offending. Offenses that involved the use of violence and/or a weapon were also related to recidivism. Multivariate analyses of factors predicting recidivism. These analyses allow a simultaneous consideration of multiple factors while predicting the effect of each factor on recidivism, holding constant the effect of the other variables in the model. This analysis indicated that the most important factors for predicting recidivism were characteristics of the victims, suggesting that we must take into account victim characteristics if we want to adequately predict recidivism amongst sexual offenders. We also applied models to assess the ability of the old classification system versus the new classification system to predict recidivism while controlling for, or holding constant, the effect of offender characteristics. For the old system, being assigned a high or medium risk level significantly predicted recidivism as compared to being assigned a low risk level to reoffend. Regarding the AWA classification system, the model predicts that the highest tier (Tier 3) offenders in Nebraska were nearly 14 times more likely to recidivate as compared to the lowest tier (Tier 1) offenders.
Details: Omaha, NE: Consortium for Crime and Justice Research, 2013. 59p.
Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 19, 2013 at: Nebraska Sex Offender Registry Study – Final Report July 31, 2013
Year: 2013
Country: United States
URL:
Shelf Number: 129643
Keywords:
RecidivismRisk AssessmentSex Offender RegistriesSex Offenders (Nebraska, U.S.) |
