The Successful Onset of Sex Offending: Determining the Correlates of Actual and Official Onset of Sex Offending

Moral Disengagement and Psychopathy: A Study on Offenders in Italian Jails

“…In line with what has been previously stated, it is clear that moral disengagement, criminal conduct and psychopathic characteristics show a very complex interplay (DeLisi et al, 2014). Mathesius and Lussier (2014) investigated and compared the covariates of actual and official onset of sex offending in order to determine who the early onset sex offender really is and whether an offender profile may differ depending on the type of measure utilized. Their findings revealed a profile of the early official onset offender in line with the typical negative profile description of the early onset general (e.g.…”

“…Changes in behaviour take place by degrees, so some actions that were initially considered as despicable become gradually more acceptable and are thus performed without causing any particular stress to the individual. Consequently, treatments to prevent repeat offending in sex offenders can be based on deconstructing the cognitive processes involved in offending (Gulotta & Curci, 2010) Some studies have showed links between antisocial behaviour, moral disengagement and psychopathic personality characteristics, with psychopathy scores being positively related to moral disengagement (Mathesius & Lussier, 2014;O'Kane, Fawcett, & Blackburn, 1996;Shulman, Cauffman, Piquero, & Fagan, 2011). Furthermore, it has been highlighted that young people with a psychopathic personality are characterized by impulsiveness, narcissism, callousness, lack of remorse and emotional indifference; they are involved not only in antisocial behaviours, but they also commit more serious crimes of interpersonal violence Vaughn, Howard, & DeLisi, 2008).…”

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Criminal Extremity: New Evidence for Sexual Homicide

“…In this way, victim of incest, for instance, was scored the same whether the incest exposure occurred once or thousands of times. Prior research has shown that the number of sex crime events that occur per victim has extraordinary range spanning one to more than 5000 sexual assaults . Ideally, researchers would have data not only on the type of adverse childhood experience that an individual endured, but also on the frequency and span of these experiences to arrive at a more refined statistical understanding of their effects on sexual homicide.…”

Perceptions of and support for sex offender policies: Testing Levenson, Brannon, Fortney, and Baker’s findings

“…By creating a false sense of security, these laws may cause parents to become complacent and miss the sexual abuse taking place in their children's homes, communities, and schools (Avrahamian, 1998). Recent research indicates that sex offenders who prey upon young children, particularly their own relatives, go undetected significantly longer than those who offend against strangers (Mathesius & Lussier, 2014). It follows that these offenders, by going undetected, will not appear on sex offender registries.…”