Treatment of Sex Offenders

13 Desistance from Crime: Toward an Integrated Conceptualization for Intervention
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that these individuals’ offending behavior is still progressing an escalating in adulthood
combined with the inability to take advantage of turning points when transitioning
in adulthood suggests that this group and the underlying processes for the
unfolding of this pattern are different from the adolescent-onset groups. In fact,
adult-onset sexual offending is unlikely to be characterized by the same developmental
background as the adolescence-onset offenders and emerging research provides
preliminary evidence of distinct childhood risk factors for adolescence-onset
versus adult-onset sexual offending (Lussier, Blokland, Mathesius, Pardini, &
Loeber, 2015 ). Furthermore, using retrospective data, Knight, Ronis, and Zakireh
( 2009 ) reported that adult as opposed to juvenile sexual offending tend to be more
strongly associated with evidence of experiences of verbal and sexual abuse during
childhood. The examination of longitudinal patterns of sexual offending among
adult-onset offenders is particularly important, therefore, as it can uncover additional
pathways of desistance specific to this group.
In a study conducted by Francis et al. (2013), three adult-onset sexual offending
trajectories were identified in a sample of offenders in a mental health institution. The
first trajectory, the late-onset accelerators (about 8 % of the sample), refers to a longitudinal
pattern where sexual offending emerges in the 40s with no evidence of
desistance thereafter. The two other groups, the high-rate accelerators (12 % of the
sample) and the low rate persistent (56 %) show similar longitudinal pattern where
the former group sexually offended at a higher rate than the latter. For both groups,
sexual offending rapidly peaked in adulthood and show a downward trend thereafter,
especially when these individuals were in their 40s. Similar patterns were reported by
Lussier and Davies ( 2011 ) with a sample of convicted adult offenders. Clearly, the
desistance patterns found in the Francis et al. ( 2014 ) study suggests the presence of
additional desistance patterns when looking more specifically among a group of adult
offenders to those observed for adolescent offenders. It is unlikely the context and
factors responsible for the desistance process identified for the adolescent- limited
pattern are also responsible the desistance among the high-rate slow desisters (or
high-rate limited in the Francis et al., 2013 study) and the late- onset accelerators.
In all, if these preliminary findings highlight the presence of some heterogeneity
in sexual offending trajectories and desistance patterns, additional research is
needed to unveil the whole spectrum of theoretically and clinically relevant sexual
offending trajectories across developmental periods. If this line of research is very
promising, more research is also needed to identify the factors responsible for desistance
from sexual offending and determine whether these factors are specific to
sexual offending and this population.
Explanatory Models of Desistance
Several explanations of desistance from offending have been proposed over the
years (for reviews, Cusson, 2008 ; Kazemian, 2014 ; Laub & Sampson, 2001 ;
Maruna, 2001 ; Soothill et al., 2013 ). These explanations and hypotheses have
focused on the impact of age and aging, life transitions and developmental stages,