Violent sex offenders lack male social support

Social networks and social support generally exert an important impact on t he management of crisis and may thus influence prevention and rehabilitatio n strategies. The authors therefore investigated the social network and sup port in a group of 62 incarcerated sexual offenders. Irrespective of the un derlying diagnosis, offenders were divided into a high-violent group and a low-violent group. A factor analysis resulted in five factors describing sp ecific dimensions of social support. A significantly lower perceived social support was found in the high-violent group as compared with the low-viole nt offenders concerning the factors "talking about problems and feelings to someone" and "rely on someone." This low support exclusively referred to m en outside the family. Neither the number of previous convictions nor lengt h of prior imprisonment predicted the amount of displayed violence. The aut hors' results are compared with those in the pertinent literature and an di scussed in light of relevant therapeutic strategies in prevention and rehab ilitation.