The sexual recidivism drop in Canada: A meta‐analysis of sex offender recidivism rates over an 80‐year period

Abstract

Research summary In the past, the Canadian government followed in the footsteps of its American counterpart by enacting “sex offender laws.” Since the 1990s, however, the Canadian criminal justice system has taken a different approach to the issue of sex offender recidivism (SOR), focusing on treatment, rehabilitation, and community risk management. This evidence‐based approach has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent convicted offenders from sexually reoffending. This criticism has not been addressed empirically, leaving open the question of whether this Canadian policy shift is associated with changes in the rate of sexual recidivism. The present study uses a meta‐analytic framework to look at 185 Canadian‐based studies involving over 50,000 offenders, making it possible to combine 226 sexual recidivism rates. After controlling for factors such as follow‐up length and the independence of samples, weighted pooled recidivism rates have declined since the 1970s by more than 60%. This trend may have gone unnoticed because it is not related to the year of publication but to the period in which the data were collected. Policy implications The findings have significant implications for criminal justice practices including the importance of using risk assessment tools that are regularly calibrated to reflect the evolution of sexual recidivism rates over time. Although the current study cannot provide firm conclusions about the factors responsible for this gradual drop, several hypotheses are discussed. Knowledge‐based criminal justice practices, better training for professionals, and improvements in treatment programs may have had a subtle and cumulative impact on sexual recidivism rates. The importance of examining period effects on SOR using a comparative and international perspective is discussed.

A meta-analysis of trends in general, sexual, and violent recidivism among youth with histories of sex offending

“…A meta-analysis allows for the pooling of findings from various studies while accounting for the sample size of each, which is critical in this field of research given the number of small-scale studies based on highly specific samples. The use of a meta-analysis to summarize the likelihood of reoffending among YSOs aligns with prior research on justice-involved adolescents (e.g., Caldwell, 2010, 2016; McCann & Lussier, 2008), as well as research on women (e.g., Cortoni et al, 2010), and adults (e.g., Fazel & Wolf, 2015; Katsiyannis et al, 2018; Lussier et al, 2022). Using a meta-analysis for systematically combining general, violent, and sexual recidivism rates across studies, we revisit Caldwell’s (2016) conclusion that the sexual but not general recidivism of YSOs has been declining over time.…”

“…This meta-analysis suggests that researchers tend to rely on older, secondary data to examine recidivism rates, which might be convenient for academic purposes, but does very little to help monitor the evolution of recidivism rates over time and across jurisdictions. Periods effects on sexual recidivism have been detected for Canadian studies composed mainly of adult perpetrators, but the factors responsible for the observed drop remain elusive (Lussier et al, 2022). The particularities of the youth justice system, the legal context, its culture and practices (e.g., diversion program, treatment) across states/provinces, countries and regions might have confounded our findings for adolescent perpetrators.…”

“…Therefore, period effects were analyzed using the year marking the start of the sampling period (range = 1928–2008). The study was conducted to detect period effects across decades that witnessed significant policy and legal changes (see, Lussier et al, 2022). Trends in recidivism rates were examined across the following periods: (a) pre-1980s, (b) 1980 to 1989, (c) 1990 to 1999, (d) 2000 to 2009, and (e) 2010 to 2019.…”

“…This could bias pooled recidivism rates in favor of an average that reflects nonindependent samples. Third, the actual pooling of the prevalence estimates did not factor in the standard error of the rate, raising concerns about the validity of those estimates (see Lussier et al, 2022). More specifically, the standard error of pooled prevalence estimates can become unstable when very low, yielding invalid estimates (e.g., negative values).…”

“…More to the point, some clinical studies oversampled YSOs who were not representative of all justice-involved youth having perpetrated sexual offenses. Methodological limitations aside, the Caldwell’s (2016) study highlights the importance of an understudied and undervalued phenomenon: the variability of criminal recidivism rates across time and place and the absence of methodological guidelines to uncover these trends (Lussier et al, 2022).…”