Treatment of Sex Offenders

13 Desistance from Crime: Toward an Integrated Conceptualization for Intervention
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sexual offending behavior will tend to be of the same nature. It is believed that, for
this group, the risk factors for sexual offending are transitory and more specific to
the period of adolescence (e.g., puberty, peer influence, binge drinking, delinquency
involvement, sexual arousal, opportunity). It is also hypothesized that sexual offending
may take various shapes (e.g., child abuse, peer abuse) because situational, contextual,
and social factors will be pivotal in creating opportunities for illegal sexual
behaviors. It is therefore argued that their offending will neither be reflective of
overwhelming deviant sexual thoughts, fantasies, or urges, nor of a deviant sexual
preference in the making. However, these individuals may show a pattern of nonsexual
juvenile delinquency.
The study by Lussier et al. ( 2012 ) has shown that desistance from sexual offending
is rapid, if not immediate, for most of them and occur in either late adolescence
or in emerging adulthood. This pattern was found for those having offending against
peers, children or in group. If there is persistence of offending beyond that period,
it is expected that offending will be nonsexual in nature. Indeed, emerging research
has shown that this group may persist offending in adulthood, but such offending is
predominantly nonsexual in nature (Lussier et al., 2012 ). Indeed, a subgroup of
youth involved in adolescence-limited sexual offending, persist their criminal activities
in adulthood but such activities are nonsexual in nature. This finding is unclear
and may be the result of different processes. It could be hypothesized that sexual
offending and the societal response to it may create a general pattern of marginalization
through a labeling effect with long-lasting effects. It could also be that juvenile
sexual offending was simply opportunistic and part of a general proclivity toward
delinquency in general (the antisocial youth as suggested by Becker, 1998 ). In both
cases, focusing intervention solely on sexual offending and desistance from sexual
offending would be inappropriate. This group is most likely to be found in
community- based samples and therefore reflects trends and observations found in
community-based studies. Currently, given the absence of a developmental model
to guide clinical assessment and the similarities in terms of offending during adolescence,
these adolescents may be misclassified as high-rate/slow-desisters.
High-Rate Slow Desisters
The second sexual offending trajectory found has been described as the high-rate/
slow-desisters and they represent a small subgroup of adolescents having committed
a sexual offense (Lussier, 2015 ). This group was initially found by Lussier et al.
( 2012 ) in a group of juvenile offenders followed over a twenty-year period. A very
similar pattern, referred to as a high-rate limited trajectory found by Francis et al.
(2013) with a sample of adult offenders, consists of juvenile-onset offenders who
persist in adulthood but their sexual offending gradually decrease until what appears
to be termination in their late-30s. The high-rate/slow-desisters are most likely to be
found in clinical samples and therefore reflect trends and observations found in
clinical studies. This group is unlikely to be found in self-reported, populationbased
community samples given the overall low prevalence of this developmental
pattern. This pattern, however, is more prevalent in criminal justice settings,