Murder and Serious Sexual Assault - Lancaster EPrints - Lancaster ...

UNUSUAL PREVIOUS OFFENCES
One general observation about this analysis of the murder cases (though there are
exceptions) is that these unusual offences often involve persons who go on to
murder in their 30s and perhaps early 40s 12 . In contrast, most murder involves
persons who are convicted in their 20s.
Offenders convicted of SSA
In Chapter 3, there were five offences identified as unusual but highly significant in
distinguishing SSA cases from the general criminal controls. These five offences are
now examined in three groups: first, those convicted of kidnapping; secondly, those
with a previous conviction for cruelty to/neglect of children; and, finally, those with
a previous sexual offence.
In total, 13 sexual assault cases and eleven controls had kidnapping in their history.
As the expectation was that there would be around 52 controls with kidnapping in
their previous criminal history, kidnapping convictions are clearly a risk factor for
subsequent serious sexual offending.
All 13 offenders convicted of kidnapping who went on to be convicted of SSA had
a first conviction aged 23 or under. However, ages for conviction of SSA varied: five
were aged 25 years or below, five were in their 30s, and three were in their 40s. The
relationship between age at conviction for kidnapping, length of sentence and age
at subsequent conviction for SSA is shown for all 13 cases in Table 12. It is worth
considering the actual periods ‘at risk’ in the community. So, for example, case A
was convicted of kidnapping (and other offences, including robbery) at the age of 34
for which he was awarded a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment, and was convicted
of rape at the age of 44. While the time between the kidnapping conviction and the
rape conviction was ten years, case A would have spent much of the time between
these events in prison (as a result of the initial sentence for kidnapping and the time
taken to process Case A through the criminal justice system for the conviction of
rape). The ten-year gap between the kidnapping and the rape offence exaggerates
the genuine time ‘at risk’.
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12 Owing to the construction of the
sample, it is not possible to have
anyone aged more than 44 years
in the series.