Martin Swain <martin.swain@shaw.ca> wrote in message news:<Fgw7e.30515$yV3.1
8915@clgrps12>..

>Snip<
>
> A quantitative meta-analysis by Hanson and Bussiere (1998) of 61 studies
> of exclusively adult sex-offenders found that rapists had a sexual
> recidivism rate of 18.9% (N = 1839) and that child molesters has a
> recidivism rate of 12.7% (N = 9603) during an average follow-up period
> of four to five years.
>
> Long-term data about recidivism is rather rare. Prentky, Lee, Knight &
> Cerce (1997) examined data across 25 years for 265 male sex offenders
> imprisoned in Massachusetts in 1959. They used a "survival analysis"
> technique, yielding a "failure rate" for sexual offences. For rapists
> the failure rate after 25 years was 39% and for child molesters it was
> 52%. The higher rates yielded by this study can be explained by the much
> longer period of follow-up.

yes the higher rates are explained by the longer follow up period.
One could conclude that the more time that passes the more likely
recidivism will occur: re-offending might not be a matter of "if" but
a matter of "when".

and remember that the rates of re-offending only include those who
have been caught.

My father is a convicted peodophile and
according to him the only thing that he did wrong was getting caught.
no remorse, no guilt, total denial of any personal responsibility.

>
> Comparison data for juvenile sexual offenders have been carefully
> reviewed by Trivits and Repucci (2002). Even long-term follow studies
> such as the one reported above for juveniles yield much lower recidivism
> rates (e.g., Sipe et al. (1998) and Bremer (1992) found recidivism rates
> for juvenile sex offenders over a ten-year follow-up to be 9,7% and 11%
> respectively). All the studies of juvenile sex offenders Trivits and
> Repucci review report recidivism rates of between 8% and 12%. This can
> be compared with rates of between 20% and 40% reported for adult sex
> offenders.
>
> It therefore seems that a case can be made for juveniles sexual
> offenders to be treated differently from adult sex offenders. Further,
> it may be worth exploring some kind of graded registration system,
> differentiating between different degrees of offence as well as
> different ages of offenders,

sounds reasonable

> when reviewing draconian laws such as
> "Megan's Law".
>

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