...Bennett, Langevin, Cheryl Peever, Rick Pettica, and Shameen Sandhu (2004) draw no general conclusions about specific rates of sex offender recidivism; their discussion is largely given over to methodological issues and the specifics of their own study. It also strikes us that the disapproval of Cheryl Webster, Rosemary Gartner, and Anthony Doob (2006) stems from ideological and pragmatic implications they believe would follow from the general realization that sex offenders exhibit high rates of recidivism, and not from the Langevin et al. study's shortcomings alone.

Some severe criticism by Webster et al. is, therefore, levelled at the failure of Langevin et al. to say enough about the sample, leaving readers unable to assess its representativeness. Representativeness is a thorny issue that depends on the population of interest. Some readers focused on epidemiological concerns might be interested in the reoffense rates for all perpetrators of sexual assault and molestation in the Canadian population as a whole. Others, interested in criminal justice policy around sentencing and conditional release, might be interested in the rates of reoffending among rapists and child molesters released from federal corrections. Still others, professionals conducting risk assessments perhaps, might be interested in subsequent violent behaviour only among male sexual assaulters assessed by forensic clinicians at their own facility. Many possibilities exist here, and we believe that, for many consumers of the literature (though certainly not all), the population of interest is adjudicated adult male rapists and child molesters (1) released (or considered for release) from secure custody. This is also the population for which the empirical literature is the largest. Clearly, research designs depend on the populations of interest--population surveys might be appropriate for the first question above (although we doubt there is any methodology suitable to answer this question), while multi-site, cross-agency follow-ups are required for the second.

The Langevin et al. study provides data about the third question, and Webster...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Long-term follow-up studies are difficult: comment on Langevin et al. ..., January 01, 2006
Reply to Webster, Gartner, and Doob.(response to Cherly Marie Webster ..., January 01, 2006

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