Will they do it again? Predicting sex-offense recidivism

This article reviews the empirical research on the prediction of reoffendin g among sexual offenders. The major predictors of sexual-offense recidivism are factors related :to sexual deviance (e.g., deviant sexual preferences, previous sex crimes) and, to a lesser extent, criminal lifestyle (e.g., an tisocial personality disorder, total number of prior offenses). The factors that predict general recidivism among sex offenders are the same as the fa ctors that predict general recidivism among nonsexual criminals (e.g., juve nile delinquency, prior violent offenses). Given that there are special pre dictors of sexual recidivism, evaluators should consider separately the ris k for sexual and nonsexual recidivism.