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

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The findings clearly provide an empirical way of examining offences which require
Sex Offender Registration. One of the objectives behind the establishment of the
Sex Offenders Register (under the Sex Offenders Act 1997), was to ‘help the police
both prevent crimes…identify suspects once an offence has been perpetrated, and
might also act as a deterrent to re-offending’ (Plotnikoff and Woolfson, 2000). As
others have highlighted, a number of serious offences do not necessitate registration
even if a sexual component was present in the offence (e.g. murder, manslaughter,
kidnapping and abduction). Within indecent assault against adult females, only more
serious cases (convictions with a custodial sentence of over 30 months) require
registration. This study tends to confirm some of the methodology that underpins the
Sex Offenders Register, but also suggests that the type of offences (and sentences)
which trigger registration could usefully be considered against these findings (given
that some minor sexual offences appear to indicate an increased relative risk of
convictions for subsequent SSA). To this end, the review of the Sex Offender Act
(Home Office, 2001) recommended that indecent assault offences against adult
females receiving more minor sentences should require registration.
One area which clearly lends itself towards further analysis is the offence of
kidnapping as a precursor offence for both serious sexual assault and murder. The
tragic death of Sarah Payne has raised public concerns over predatory stranger
paedophiles. This study suggests that more focused studies on small groups of very
serious offenders (and relevant control groups), as a means to identify risk, might
possibly yield dividends.
The analysis of the future risk of homicide by victim-offender relationship, also
suggests that our understanding of the risk of future serious offending may be
markedly improved by analysis built upon more detailed offence and offender data.
The absence of detailed data on the nature of sex offenders and their offences has
been an impediment in this sense, but several initiatives are under way which will
improve data quality in this important area, and will allow further research to be
much more focused 13 .
From an investigative perspective, this study has provided a framework for National
Crime and Operations Faculty to guide the collection of information on precursor
offences which lie outside the current offence criteria of murder and rape. A limited
range of ‘unusual’ offence categories which scored a high relative risk of subsequent
serious offending would appear to offer most in terms of linking to more serious,
subsequent offences.
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13 For instance, the plan to establish
a national Sexual and Violent
Offenders Database and the move
towards routine ‘flagging’ of all
violence offences by the offendervictim
relationship.