OFFENDER–VICTIM INTERACTION AND CRIME EVENT OUTCOMES: MODUS OPERANDI AND VICTIM EFFECTS ON THE RISK OF INTRUSIVE SEXUAL OFFENSES AGAINST CHILDREN*

Criminological research has shown the relevance of examining offender–victim interaction and related factors to understand crime event outcomes. In sexual offenses against children, an obvious lack of knowledge exists regarding this issue. From a criminological perspective, we seek to improve our understanding of the offender–victim interaction in sexual offenses against children and, in particular, what factors might increase the risk of a more intrusive offense. We argue that modus operandi strategies play a central role in crime event outcomes and examine this hypothesis with data obtained from a semistructured interview conducted with offenders. As expected, modus operandi was found to have a strong effect on crime event outcomes, especially victim participation during sexual episodes. Victim effects also emerged from the analyses. Specifically, a strong interaction effect between age and gender of the victim was found for victim participation, which suggests that as the victim gets older, offenders are more likely to make their victim participate in sexual episodes when abusing a male victim but are less likely to do so when abusing a female victim.     

Modus operandi and situational aspects in adolescent sexual offenses against children: a further examination

The relationship between situational factors and the modus operandi of 103 adolescents involved in sexual offenses against children (12 years old or younger) is analyzed. Situational factors taken into account in this study are the location of the crime, the offender-victim relationship, and the presence of deviant sexual fantasies involving the victim prior to the offense. Modus operandi strategies were measured on the basis of participants' responses to Kaufman's Modus Operandi Questionnaire. Results indicate that modus operandi strategies are influenced by situational factors and that the offender's home, when no one else is home, is likely to be the place and the situation for adolescent offenders to adopt manipulative strategies. Suggestions are made regarding future modus operandi studies.     

Patterns of criminal achievement in sexual offending: Unravelling the “successful” sex offender

Purpose

The current study examines significant variations in criminal achievement across sex offenders. To examine the “successful” sex offender, the study proposes a concept of achievement in sexual offending defined as the ability to maximise the payoffs of a crime opportunity while minimizing the costs.

Methods

The study is based on a sample of convicted adult male sex offenders using retrospective longitudinal data.

Results

The study findings show a wide variation in criminal achievement, a variation that is not correlated with the severity of sentences meted out or the actuarial risk scores obtained by these offenders. Those offenders who specialize in sex crimes were shown to be the most productive and least detected offenders. Two types of successful offenders emerge, the first relying on his conventional background in targeting a victim that can be repeatedly abused for a long period without detection. The second is a younger offender that is successful in the sense of being able to complete aggressions on multiple victims.

Conclusions

Results suggest that the successful sex offender is not “detected” once he enters the criminal justice system, nor is he handled in a way that may deter him from sexually reoffending in the future.     

No body,no crime? The role of forensic awareness in avoiding police detection in cases of sexual homicide

PurposeThe study examines whether the use of forensic awareness strategies increases the chance of avoiding police detection in sexual homicide.MethodsLogistic and negative binomial regression analyses are used on a sample of 350 cases of sexual homicide – 250 solved and 100 unsolved cases – in order to determine if forensic awareness strategies are related to the status of the case (i.e., solved versus unsolved) and the number of days before body recovery, while controlling for certain victim characteristics.ResultsAlthough an offender’s use of precautions does not seem to increase the offender’s chance of avoiding police detection, some modus operandi behavior adopted by the offender at the crime scene may help to delay the discovery of the victim, and thus delay the offender’s apprehension. Moreover, the likelihood of whether or not a sexual murderer is apprehended varied significantly across victim characteristics.ConclusionSome offenders seem to exhibit rational thinking in targeting certain types of victims and in adopting certain strategies in order to delay body recovery. Number of days until body recovery is a more appropriate measure of detection avoidance than case status, as it is not biased by administrative rules or timing of data entry.     

Inked into Crime? An Examination of the Causal Relationship between Tattoos and Life-Course Offending among Males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

Purpose

There have been a number of prior studies that have investigated the relationship between tattoos and crime with most documenting evidence of an association. Specifically, prior research often suggests that individuals with tattoos commit more crime, are disproportionately concentrated in offender and institutionalized populations, and often have personality disorders. Having said this, the bulk of the prior research on this topic has been correlational.

Methods

In the current study, we rely on data from a prospective longitudinal study of 411 British males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and employ propensity score matching to determine if the link between tattoos and crime may in fact be causal.

Results

Results suggest that having tattoos is better considered as a symptom of another set of developmental risk factors and personality traits that are both related to tattooing and being involved in crime rather than as a causal factor for predicting crime over the life-course.

Conclusions

Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type

Purpose

This study examined the interaction between homicide victim and offender criminal lifestyles and the situational characteristics of homicides that occurred in the city of Newark, New Jersey from 1997 through 2007. Three research questions were explored: (1) what are the lifestyles exhibited by homicide victims and offenders; (2) are there different types of homicide actors (i.e., victim and/or offender) based on their criminal lifestyle; (3) do varying homicide actor (i.e., victim and/or offender) types influence the characteristics of homicide incidents?

Methods

Five hundred and thirteen homicide incidents was used to answer the three research questions. Hierarchical Agglomerative Cluster and Logistic Regression Analyses were employed to answer the research questions.

Findings

The findings showed that criminal lifestyles were indeed very common among homicide victims and offenders, and that they resemble each other. The findings also showed that there were two types of homicide victims and offenders, and that these types influenced the etiology of homicide incidents.

Conclusion

Overall, the results suggest that researchers and practitioners should take into account the criminal lifestyles of potential victims and offenders when tailoring homicide prevention strategies.     

Gender as social threat: A study of offender sex,situational factors,gender dynamics and social control

Purpose

Adopting a social threat perspective, the assessment explores how gender and social gender dynamics affect the labeling of convicted felons using a unique sentencing outcome - adjudication withheld.

Methods

This research investigates the direct effect of gender, and interactive impact of offender sex/crime type, on adjudication withheld for a sample of probationers (N = 110,419) sentenced in Florida between 2000 and 2002 using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling. The study also explores how social gender dynamics moderate these relationships.

Results

Female offenders are significantly more likely than men to receive adjudication withheld. Women convicted of atypical crimes, such as assault, auto theft and drug sale/manufacturing have better odds of avoiding the felon label than females convicted of other crimes. Finally, measures of gendered threat do not increase the use of social control for female offenders.

Conclusions

Women have significantly better chances of avoiding a felon label; however, this varies by crime type. Criminal justice actors may be reluctant to penalize female offenders with a felon label and the stigma of violent crime convictions. Finally, gendered threat measures did not weaken the leniency shown to female probationers in Florida, possible due to the increased resources available to women in the study areas.     

Cleaning up your act: Forensic awareness as a detection avoidance strategy

Purpose

Although rational choice researchers has investigated how offenders successfully commit certain crimes, there is a lack of research looking at the factors explaining the use - or not - of certain detection avoidance strategies. This study introduces the concept of “forensic awareness” as a detection avoidance strategy, and proposes to examine the effect of disinhibitors, target selection behaviors, and acts that may potentially leave evidence at the crime scene on its use.

Methods

Factors influencing forensic awareness are tested using logistic regression models on a sample of 222 rape events collected from offenders incarcerated in Canada.

Results

Offenders exhibit less forensic awareness when under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. However, offenders who show some form of target selection are more likely to take forensic precautions. Finally, offenders who break and enter in the victim's residence, and undertake specific sexual acts during the crime are also more likely to exhibit forensic awareness.

Conclusion

Despite the increasing use and knowledge of forensic evidence by law enforcement, offenders are inconsistent in their forensic awareness and they direct most of their efforts toward protecting their identity, neglecting to either destroy or clean up DNA that could be recovered at the crime scene.     

Alcohol and drug consumption among sexual offenders

Purpose

To evaluate the role of alcohol and drug consumption between sexual offenders against boys and girls.

Method

It was an observational, retrospective and cross-sectional study carried out by the Ambulatory for the treatment of sexual disorders of ABC Medical College, Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil (ABSex). The sample comprised 104 convicts, over 18 years old, sentenced only for sexual crimes against children (below 11 years old). Alcohol and drug consumption, sexual abuse history, sexual impulsivity, and risk of recidivism were evaluated.

Results

The sexual offenders against boys showed higher alcohol consumption problems than sexual offenders against girls (χ² = 19.76, 1 d.f., p < 0.01). The severity of alcohol consumption was also significantly higher in the sexual offenders against non-related boys than in the sexual offenders against non-related girls (p = 0.037, ANOVA). After adjustment for other variables, such as monthly income before the penalty and alcohol consumption at the moment of the crime, the alcohol consumption severity in sexual offenders against boys was significantly higher than in sexual offenders against girls (OR = 1.05, CI 1.01–1.08, p < 0.01).

Conclusions

Alcohol use or abuse is associated with the perpetration of sexual aggression. The role of alcohol consumption seems to be greater in sexual offenders against boys than in girls and this can contribute to criminal recidivism.     

The Moving Home Effect: A Quasi Experiment Assessing Effect of Home Location on the Offence Location

Objectives

This study aims to test whether the home location has a causal effect on the crime location. To accomplish this the study capitalizes on the natural experiment that occurs when offender??s move, and uses a unique metric, the distance between sequential offenses, to determine if when an offender moves the offense location changes.

Methods

Using a sample of over 40,000 custodial arrests from Syracuse, NY between 2003 and 2008, this quasi-experimental design uses t test??s of mean differences, and fixed effects regression modeling to determine if moving has a significant effect on the distance between sequential offenses.

Results

This study finds that when offenders move they tend to commit crimes in locations farther away from past offences than would be expected without moving. The effect is rather small though, both in absolute terms (an elasticity coefficient of 0.02), and in relation to the effect of other independent variables (such as the time in between offenses).

Conclusions

This finding suggests that the home has an impact on where an offender will choose to commit a crime, independent of offence, neighborhood, or offender characteristics. The effect is small though, suggesting other factors may play a larger role in influencing where offenders choose to commit crime.     

The role of sexual interests and situational factors on rapists' modus operandi: Implications for offender profiling

Purpose. Although it has often been suggested that there is a direct relationship between an individual's sexual interests and behaviours exhibited during the crime they commit, few studies have investigated this question empirically. The purpose of the present study was thus to examine the role of sexual interests and situational factors as to their possible relationship to three components of rapists' modus operandi: (a) the level of organization of the offence, (b) the level of force used by the offender, and (c) the level of injury inflicted on the victim during the sexual assault. Methods. This study is based on a sample of 118 offenders who sexually assaulted a female aged 16 or over. All participants were assessed phallometrically and through the CQSA, a computerized questionnaire. Data were analysed using multiple regression analyses. Results. Our findings showed links between sexual interests, situational factors, and rapists' modus operandi. Firstly, individuals demonstrating a greater sexual interest in nonsexual violence showed a higher level of organization in the modus operandi. Secondly, alcohol consumption prior to the offence was related to a higher level of coercion. Finally, a negative emotional state prior to the crime was related to a high level of injury inflicted on the victim. Conclusions. Despite the fact that several authors postulated a direct link between the offender's sexual interests and his behaviour at the crime scene, our results only partially support this hypothesis. Moreover, our results partly support the fact that crime scene behaviour is related to offenders' personal characteristics, challenging an assumption of criminal profiling. We still believe that the modus operandi is related to offenders' personal attributes. It is, however, dynamic and may fluctuate due to certain situational factors related to offenders and victims. Future studies should take into account situational factors related to offenders and their victims.     

Target Selection Models with Preference Variation Between Offenders

Objectives

This study explores preference variation in location choice strategies of residential burglars. Applying a model of offender target selection that is grounded in assertions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, crime pattern and social disorganization theories, it seeks to address the as yet untested assumption that crime location choice preferences are the same for all offenders.

Methods

Analyzing detected residential burglaries from Brisbane, Australia, we apply a random effects variant of the discrete spatial choice model to estimate preference variation between offenders across six location choice characteristics. Furthermore, in attempting to understand the causes of this variation we estimate how offenders’ spatial target preferences might be affected by where they live and by their age.

Results

Findings of this analysis demonstrate that while in the aggregate the characteristics of location choice are consistent with the findings from previous studies, considerable preference variation is found between offenders.

Conclusions

This research highlights that current understanding of choice outcomes is relatively poor and that existing applications of the discrete spatial choice approach may underestimate preference variation between offenders.

     

Consistency in crime site selection: An investigation of crime sites used by serial sex offenders across crime series

PurposeKnowing sites used by serial sex offenders to commit their crimes is highly beneficial for criminal investigations. However, environmental choices of serial sex offenders remain unclear to this date. Considering the challenges these offenders pose to law enforcement, the study aims to identify sites serial sex offenders use to encounter and release their victims and investigate their stability across crime series.MethodsThe study uses latent class analysis (LCA) to identify victim encounter and release sites used by 72 serial sex offenders having committed 361 sex offenses. Additional LCA are performed to investigate the stability of these offense environments across offenders' crimes series.ResultsDistinct profiles of crime sites that are recurrent across crime series are found, suggesting that serial sex offenders present a limited diversity of victim encounter and victim release sites. Encounter sites representative of longer crime series are also identified. Specifically, the use of sites known to "attract" potential victims decreases over series and offenders become more risk-taking in regard of sites used to encounter their victims.ConclusionsThe study identifies patterns of site- selection for the victim encounter and release in cases of serial crimes. Implications for crime linkage and police investigations strategies are discussed.     

Offender-focused police intervention in residential burglary and theft from vehicle hot spots: a partially blocked randomized control trial

Objectives

To test an offender-focused police intervention in residential burglary and residential theft from vehicle hot spots and its effect on crime, arrests, and offender recidivism. The intervention was prevention-focused, in which detectives contacted offenders and their families at their homes to discourage criminal activity.

Methods

The study was a partially blocked, randomized controlled field experiment in 24 treatment and 24 control hot spots in one suburban city with average crime levels. Negative binomial and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression were used to test the effect of the presence of intervention and its dosage on crime and offender recidivism, and examination of average and standardized treatment effects were conducted.

Results

The analyses of the hot spot impact measures did not reveal significant results to indicate that the treatment had an effect on crime or arrest counts, or on repeat arrests of the targeted or non-targeted offenders living in the hot spots. However, the relationships, while not significant, were in a promising direction.

Conclusions

The collective findings from all four impact measures suggest that the intervention may have had some influence on the targeted offenders, as well as in the treatment hot spots. So, while the experimental results did not show an impact, they are promising. Limitations include large hot spots, the low case number, low base rates, and inadequate impact measures. Suggestions are provided for police agencies and researchers for implementing preventive offender-focused strategies and conducting studies in suburban cities.

     

Sexual predators and prey: a comparative study of the hunting behavior of rapists and child molesters

Although there has been an increase in research on sex offenders' modus operandi, geographic decision making, and hunting behavior, most studies still tend to emphasize criminal motivation while overlooking the role of situational and environmental factors. Studies of mixed samples of rapists and child molesters typically neglect to conduct comparative analyses. Consequently, the full nature of their distinction is not clear. This is particularly problematic for the understanding of crossover or polymorphous sex offenders, who target victims from various age groups. Using a sample of 216 incarcerated sexual offenders, hunting behavior patterns were identified and tested to establish which hunting behavior patterns were associated with each type of offender. Relationships between modus operandi, geographic decision making, and hunting behavior were also examined. Three types of offender were identified: (a) manipulative; (b) opportunist; and (c) coercive. The manipulative offender is typically a child molester. The coercive offender is typically a rapist. The opportunist offender includes both rapists and child molesters. These findings emphasize the relevance of polymorphous, crossover, or versatile sex offenders and suggest new ways of conceptualizing sex offenders and their study.     

A national population based examination of the association between age-versatility trajectories and recidivism rates

Purpose

To compare theoretical explanations of the age-versatility curve including the hypotheses of: self-control theory stating that versatility is followed by specialization; taxonomic theory stating that adolescent-limited offenders are specialists and life-course offenders are versatile and orthogenetic theory stating that specialization and versatility are present in a large number of offender groups.

Methods

These explanations were tested with Israeli national population-based data on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n = 17,176) with 248,114 registered police contacts from 1996 to 2008.

Results

Semi-parametric group-based modeling identified two trajectory-groups that characterized the age-versatility curve of police contacts before first conviction. The trajectory-groups were labeled as versatility (n = 2,447; 14.2%), and specialization (n = 14,729; 85.8%). After controlling for 19 documented demographic, familial, and criminogenic risk factors, Cox regression showed that juvenile offenders in the versatility group were at increased risk of recidivism compared to offenders in the specialization group.

Conclusions

These results partially adhere with taxonomic theory than the remaining theories and indicate that assuming a trajectory of elevated pre-conviction versatility increases the risk of recidivism.     

Examining the relationship between sexual offenders and their victims: Interpersonal differences between stranger and non-stranger sexual offences

Abstract

The present study examined the behavioural differences in sexual assault offences in relation to the offender–victim relationship (stranger versus non-stranger). These differences were examined specifically in the context of four interpersonal themes of interaction: dominance, submission, hostility and cooperation. The details of 100 sexual offence cases (50 stranger and 50 non-stranger) were content-analysed, generating 58 dichotomous variables, covering offender and victim behaviour during the offence. χ² tests comparing the two samples found that offenders who were strangers to their victims were more likely than non-stranger offenders to display behaviours that indicate a hostile, violent offence style. In contrast, those offenders who knew their victims were more likely than strangers to display a less violent and more personal, compliance-gaining offence style. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for offender rehabilitation and victim support.