Recidivism of Sex Offendes Released from Prison in 1994

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Methodology3-year followup periodFor analytic purposes, "3 years" wasdefined as 1,096 days from the day ofrelease from prison. Any rearrest,reconviction, or re-imprisonment occurringafter 1,096 days from the 1994release was not included. A convictionafter 1,096 days was not counted evenif it resulted from an arrest within theperiod.Separating sex offenders into fourtypesThe report gives statistics for four typesof sex offenders. Separating sex offendersinto the four types was done usinginformation — in particular, the statutenumber for the imprisonment offense,the literal version of the statute, anumeric FBI code (called the “NCIC”code, short for “National Crime InformationCenter”) indicating what theimprisonment offense was, and miscellaneousother information — availablein the prison records on the 9,691 men.However, the prison records obtainedfor the study did not always contain allfour pieces of information on theimprisonment offense. Moreover, theavailable offense information was notalways detailed enough to reliablydistinguish different types of sexoffenders.The process of sorting sex offendersinto different types involved first creatingthe study’s definitions of the fourtypes, and then determining whichState statute numbers, which literalversions of those statutes, and whichNCIC codes conformed to the definitions.Each inmate was next classifiedinto one of the types (or possibly intomore than one type, since the four arenot mutually exclusive) depending onwhether the imprisonment offenseinformation available on him fit thestudy’s definition.An obstacle to classifying sex offendersinto types was that the labels “rape,”“sexual assault,” “child molestation,”“statutory rape” were not widely used inState statutes, and when they wereused they did not always conform tothe study’s definitions of them. Indeciding which type of sex offender toclassify the prisoner as, importancewas attached not to the label the lawgave to his conviction offense, but tohow well the law’s definition of theoffense fit the study’s definition of thetype.Sex offenders compared to non-sexoffendersIn 1994, prisons in 15 States released272,111 prisoners, representingtwo-thirds of all prisoners released inthe United States that year. Among the272,111 were 262,420 released prisonerswhose imprisonment offense wasnot a sex offense. Non-sex offendersinclude inmates, both male and female,who were in prison for violent crimes(such as murder or robbery), propertycrimes (such as burglary or motorvehicle theft), drug crimes, and publicorder offenses. Like the 9,691 malesex offenders examined in this report,all non-sex offenders were servingprison terms of one year or more inState prison when they were releasedin 1994.At various places, this report compares9,691 released male sex offenders to262,420 released non-sex offenders.While labeled “non-sex offenders,” the262,420 actually includes a smallnumber- 87- who are sex offenders.The 87 are all the female sex offendersreleased from prisons in the 15 Statesin 1994.Ages of molested and allegedlymolested childrenInformation on the ages of molestedchildren was needed for two calculations:1) age of the child the releasedsex offender was sent to prison formolesting, and 2) age of the child allegedlymolested by the released sexoffender during the 3-year follow-upperiod. The most frequent source ofboth was a sex statute: either the sexstatute the offender was imprisoned forviolating, or the statute the releasedprisoner was charged with violatingwhen he was rearrested for a sexcrime. The former was obtained fromthe prison records assembled for thestudy; the latter, from the assembledarrest records.None of the sex statutes was found toapply to a victim of a specific age; forexample, just to 12-year-olds. Butsome were found to apply just tochildren in a certain age range; forexample, under 12, or 13 to 15, or 16to 17. While specific ages of childrencould not be obtained from statutes,the availability of information on ageranges at least made it possible toobtain approximate ages. The rule thatwas adopted was to record the victim’s(or alleged victim’s) age as the upperlimit of a statute’s age range. To illustrate,a statute might indicate that thecomplainant/victim be “at least 13 butless than 16 years of age.” In that case,the age of the child was recorded as15, since the statute indicated theupper limit of the age range as any age“less than 16.” As another example, if astatute indicated the complainant/victim be “under 12 years of age,” thechild’s age was recorded as 11, as thephrasing of the age range did notinclude 12-year-olds, only those “under12.” Because the victim (or allegedvictim) was always assigned the age ofthe oldest person in the age range, thestudy made the victims (or allegedvictims) appear older than they actuallywere.How missing data were handled in thereportIn many instances, the data needed tocalculate a statistic were not availablefor all 9,691 released sex offenders.For example, the 9,691 were releasedin 15 States, but data needed to determinethe number reconvicted were onlyavailable for the 9,085 released in 14 ofthe 15. Of the 9,085, 2,180 (24%) werereconvicted. When data were missing,the statistic was computed on thoseRecidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 37
cases in which the data were available,but treated both in the tables and in thetext as though it were based on thetotal population. For example, “24%” isthe statistic that appears in all tablesand text that give the percent reconvicted;and since 24% of 9,691 is2,326, the text says that “2,326 of the9,691 were reconvicted,” despite thefact that the “24%” was actually obtainedby dividing 2,180 by 9,085. Thetext could have been written to say“2,180 of the 9,085 were reconvicted,”but that wasn’t done because introducinga new denominator (9,085) into thetext would have created confusion forthe reader.Missing data on out-of-State rearrestsBecause of missing information, thestudy was unable to determine howmany inmates released from New Yorkprisons were rearrested outside of NewYork. The study was able to documenthow many prisoners released in theother 14 States were rearrestedoutside the State that released them.Because of incomplete New York data,the report’s recidivism rates aresomewhat deflated.Missing data on rearrest for a sexcrimeAccording to arrest records compiled inthe study, 4,163 of the 9,691 releasedsex offenders were rearrested for anew crime of some kind. It was notalways possible to determine fromthese records whether the new crimewas a sex crime. For 202 rearrestedprisoners, the arrest record did notidentify the type of crime. For the restthe record did identify the type but theoffense label was not always specificenough to distinguish sex crimes fromother crimes. For example, if the labelsaid “contributing to the delinquency ofa minor,” “indeceny,” “morals offense,”“family offense,” or “child abuse,” theoffense was coded as a non-sex crimeeven though, in some unknownnumber of cases, it was actually a sexcrime.According to arrest records, 5.3% ofthe 9,691 (517 out of 9,691) releasedsex offenders were rearrested foranother sex crime. For the two reasonsdescribed immediately above, 5.3%was probably an undercount of howmany were rearrested for a sex crime.How much of an undercount could notbe firmly determined from the dataassembled for the study. However, aconservative measure of the size of theundercount was obtained from thedata. The study database included 121rearrested sex offenders whose arrestrecord did not indicate they wererearrested for a sex crime (the rearrestwas either for a non-sex crime or for anunknown type of crime) but whosecourt record did indicate they werecharged with a sex crime. When thestudy calculated the percentagerearrested for a sex crime, the 121were not included among the 517 witha rearrest for a sex crime. Had the 121been included in the calculation of therearrest rate, the total numberrearrested for a sex crime would havebeen 638 rather than 517, and thepercentage rearrested for a sex crimewould have been 6.6% rather than5.3%. This suggests an undercount ofabout 1 percentage point.Texas prisoners classified as "othertype of release"Texas released 692 male sex offendersin 1994, of which 129 were classifiedas release category “17", definedas “other type of release.” Numerousdata quality checks were run on the129 and the 64 of them who wererearrested. The rearrest rate for the129 was about average for Texasreleases. But numerous anomalieswere found for the 64 who wererearrested:1. The rearrest offense for the 64 wasalways missing from their arrest record2. The date of rearrest for the 64 wasalways the same as their release date3. Virtually all 64 were reconvicted for asex crime4. The sentence length imposed fortheir new sex crime was identical to thesentence they were serving whenreleased in 1994.Because of these anomalies, the 129were excluded from the calculation of“percent reconvicted for a sex crime.”Counting rulesIn this report, rearrest was measuredby counting the number of differentpersons who were rearrested at leastonce. A released prisoner who wasrearrested several times or had multiplerearrest charges filed against himwas counted as only one rearrestedperson. The same counting ruleapplied to reconviction and the otherrecidivism measures.If a released prisoner was rearrestedseveral times, his earliest rearrest wasused to calculate his time-to-rearrest.The same counting rule applied toreconviction and recidivism defined asa new prison sentence.If a released prisoner had both in-Stateand out-of-State rearrests, he wascounted as having an out-of-Staterearrest regardless of whether theout-of-State rearrest was his earliestrearrest. The same rule applied incases where the released prisoner hadboth felony and misdemeanorrearrests, or both sex crime andnon-sex crime rearrests. The personwas counted as having a felonyrearrest or a sex crime rearrest regardlessof temporal sequence.The aim of these rules was to countpeople, not events. The only tables inthe report that do not follow the rule aretables 41 and 42.First releaseAll 15 States had first releases, butthey could not be identified in 1 State(Ohio). They could be identified inMichigan, but Michigan data onsentence length did not fit the study’sdefinition. Since sentence length wascritical to several statistics calculated38 Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994
Page 3: U.S. Department of JusticeOffice of
Page 6 and 7: essere un PD che aspetta Dellai. Ul
Page 8 and 9: Released child molesters with moret
Page 10 and 11: offense was “sexual assault,” d
Page 12 and 13: eferred to as “out-of-State” ar
Page 14 and 15: Child molesters and statutory rapis
Page 16 and 17: Child molesters and sexual assaulte
Page 18 and 19: Sex offenders compared tonon-sex of
Page 20 and 21: The 2,326 reconvicted for a new cri
Page 22 and 23: Time to recidivismAll sex offenders
Page 27 and 28: Number of prior arrestsfor any type
Page 31 and 32: Time to rearrestAll sex offendersWi
Page 35 and 36: State where rearrested for a sexcri
Page 37 and 38: Assuming that the 209 sex offenders
Page 39 and 40: sentenced to prison for a sex crime
Page 43 and 44: Methodology3-year followup periodFo
Page 45: from data on first releases (forexa
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Recidivism of Sex Offendes Released from Prison in 1994

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