What is the average age of a sex offender

I never said the registry kept us safe. I said the opposite. Please look at the registry in your county and count the number of people who are non violent offenders who were minors when placed on the registry in my county the mumber is zero.

Think for yourself. Our kids are notin constant danger from creeps. But they are not in constant danger from the government either. I guess we all become what we fight. Raised three kids and never once looked at it. Thank you for contributing to the chorus of voices loudly proclaiming that the registry has ceased to protect the children it was designed to shield from sex crimes. It is nice to see facts to counter the fear and hype that has gripped our nation.

In fact those 14 year olds should not be deemed criminals at all for having sex or more likely, not having sex but stripping partially naked in company. They should be treated as the children they are, get a good talking to from their parents, and left to figure it out for themselves.

Now, if they were to actually rape another child an infinitely small chance they should be tried and convicted for that. Mary, I agree that a 14 year old should be held accountable. But this is not the way. Two underage kids experimenting does not demand that a life be ruined forever.

Cousin B was the exception about re-offending. He did. Two 15 year olds — no crime. A 20 year old and a 10 year old — crime. This would put Texas on the lower end of these cases.

Not all states have these types of laws. You have to think how many young offenders are on the list because of how the parents react. Wow — year-olds are the most frequent sex offenders. We ought to put all prudes on a psychopath registry. Getting girls pregnant at that age should have some long-term financial strings tied to it. I think jail is called for when diseases are spread.

Maybe some at least? It strikes me that one outstanding feature of US culture is that criminality is always punished for life. Someone who commits any crime and goes to prison will find it difficult, if not impossible, to get a job ever again. Someone who has ever been arrested, even if the arrest was unlawful and charges never brought can find it very difficult to ever get a job again. I hate to say this but girls are not more mature than boys. They just act differently in their immaturity then boys.

And anyone can be talk into something including sex. And yes both sexs have to take responsibility for their behavior but the consequences of sex are different for boys than girls. Warren, I did not use Google. Or any search engine. I found no 14 year olds. I did find a 15 year old. His victim was 5. This article is hysterical.

Again, only 1 in people in my county is on the list. Almost none of those are minors. I cannot verify that, at least in my region. Furthermore, if you look deeper into the report, the data is quite disturbing.

On page 9, you will see a series of tables that reports the age profiles of sexual assault offenders within victim age categories. The age of the offender peaks around 14 in two of the graphs presented. When the victim is 18 or older, the most common age of the offender is about 22 or So, in other words these 14 year olds that are the most common sex offenders are committing acts against those who are 11 years old or younger.

To reiterate: when the victim is , the most common age of the offender is 17, NOT ONLY when the victim is 11 or younger, the most common age of the offender is If I were to write an article about this, that might be my focus. Is the sex offender list the best way to promote public safety? Almost certainly not.

When I read this report, I come to a wholly different conclusion. Someone above told me I needed to go back to school. I have Ph. Who else would have time to type this at work? If your 14 year old assaults a five year old baby, he or she might. Hundreds of thousands of junior high kids do that every year, and the number of them that have contact with the criminal justice system must astonishingly small, given that our courts are not clogged with minors who had sex.

The third is just beginning his teen journey. Also — as a mother of boys — I would say not only should boys be continued be taught to respect girls but it also goes the other way. Getting girls pregnant at ANY age has long-term financial strings tied to it. If one student sends another student a picture of their naked body both students can be prosecuted for engaging in child pornography and both be put on the sex offenders list for life.

And jailing people for spreading disease?!?!?! There are too many people locked up for ridiculous reasons now. But then you start getting to the slippery slope of 5 year-olds playing on the playground and someone catching a cold and parents trying to litigate against each other for it. Just a thought I had while looking for my 1st home.

What are these dots doing to property values? And for the people who are gung ho about making stricter laws and making the list even easier to get on I say be careful what you wish for as one of those dots could easily pop up in your neighborhood maybe even your own home. Almost all the comments seem to assume we are discussing consensual activities between curious teenagers.

At least there is nothing in the report itself that would lead to that conclusion. But I imagine it does affect values. If it was a 14 year old who had sex with a 14 year old, I might not mind. Lots of things impact property value. Your neighbor has a big RV? That hurts too. The sex offender list could be misused in the manner. Do you live next to the DA? Before the long comment, I was typing on my phone. It was hard to really write much clearly. I am definitely anti-registry but not just because of the sympathetic cases.

Even the violent offenders should not be on the registry. The violent offender should get a prison sentence proportionate to the crime. As it is now, even the lesser crimes are getting longer and longer sentences. Because legislators like to be seen as tough on crime, and increasing the sentence length for the icky crimes no one wants to defend is a sure-fire way to be seen that way.

Why do I say that no one should be on the registry? Because the registry is sold as a way to protect your family from creeps and perverts but it does not do that. Creeps and perverts who complete their court-ordered sentence rarely re-offend, so the registry is protecting us from people we need no protection from.

MOST people on the registry are non-violent, first-time offenders who will not offend again. The perpetrators of the seriously violent crimes may never be listed on the registry or not be listed until a few decades have passed because they are in prison for a long time. The next sex offense arrest in your community is most likely going to be of someone who is a first-time offender and his victim if there is one was not protected by the registry. You know who else is on the registry? The families of registrants.

Spouses, parents, children. Do those people deserve to have their address published? Do kids deserve to have notices sent to the neighbors when they move into a new neighborhood, notices that warn the neighbors away from their home? Information shown on the registry varies from state to state. Some states publish the employers of registered sex offenders.

If you were an employer, would you hire an RSO if it meant that the name of your company would show up on the registry? Some states show the age of the victim but not the year of the crime. So a yo convicted of raping a yo looks pretty bad; if his crime was committed when he was 19, the picture changes—but the registry is not interested in telling accurate stories. Some states require all registrants to be on for LIFE. My husband is on the registry for 25 years in our state but it would be only ten in a neighboring state.

Not because his crime is more dangerous there but because the crazy-quilt of laws pieced together by the legislators in that state is different from the crazy-quilt pieced together in our state. Registered sex offenders have been murdered by people who found their addresses on the registry. Is that what you want? Who is protected by that? As for the questions about which crimes land someone on the registry, it varies from state to state.

Not all states put the public urinators on the registry but some 13? Not all states put juveniles on the registry but many do. Not all states put streakers on the registry but at least one state does—and a young man killed himself when he was arrested for streaking in that state because the fear of being on the regisry for life was a terrifying prospect.

The registry is not an innocuous bit of paperwork. It has a direct negative affect on registrants and their families—and all without protecting anyone. This is long and too late in the thread. Most children who are abused, are abused by people the parents trusted. So you could get a sizable improvement if parents knew, specifically, who not to trust. Unfortunately, sometimes you get cases where people know of the abuse, but find that their own interests align with the abuser, rather than the abused.

Superiors in the Catholic Church were afraid that if it became known that some of the priests of the church were pedophiles, the other good works of the Church would be adversely affected, so when abuse surfaced, they quickly moved the pedophile priests. It was not unheard-of for a school that hired a new teacher, only to have a hint of scandal surface, to accept a resignation with a non-disclosure agreement, allowing the teacher to be employed elsewhere.

Dave Smith — thanks for your analysis. It sounds, though, that Appendix A supports the blog post and the article which appeared in the NY Post… , so there is at least some basis for the misleading fear-mongering. I agree with the vast majority of what you say, but I get the feeling that you may give the justice system a little too much benefit of the doubt.

Forget about 14 year olds having sex, and think of all the sexting going on. Unkind and thoughtless? A child traumatized by a sexual assault is no less traumatized by a 14 year old than a 21 year old. A fourteen year old should definitely know better. What excuse making- especially in light of the fact that sex Ed is being taught younger and younger.

Wake up people. Sexuality needs to be respected by the time someone is 10 let alone 14! A Highschool friend of mine almost killed herself freshman year of college because her teen age brother had molested as a child. Sorry but I find all of this acceptance of sexual a use by a 24 year old completely outrageous- 14 is not 4!

They had sex, or experimented sexually, with their peers who were experimenting right along with them. Mary — my heart aches for your friend. What a terrible thing for her to have gone through. But I have to ask. Did he do anything before molesting her that would have put him on that list? Did you know there is a high correlation between molesters like this and they themselves being molested as children? That includes lots of support and access to therapy for survivors of crime and a reduction in crime rates by those with issues themselves.

Do you want to talk to the mother of the dead boy who killed himself after being placed on the SOR-thanks to the wonderful piece of legislation titled the Adam Walsh Act.

The boy was walking to the bathroom when he decided to expose himself. OK, so I am going to put some personal experience out there and hope someone of you read it and see where Mary is right, to some extent. The earliest I remember, I was 4,so he would have been 10, anyway, I was groomed so by the time I was 9 and he was 15, I knew it was wrong but I was terrified of him beatin me up he had nearly suffocated me on several occassionally.

I was raped and molested and he knew what he did. Yes I agree that some laws are out of wack, but I also believe that there needs to be others in place. Those that allow the victims to come forward without fear.

Anyway, at only 22, and with two children of my own, I feel it is my responsibility to protect them, and I would like to know where those predators are located. I think what happened to you is deplorable!

And I believe your brother should be in prison for what he did. Unfortunately, this piece of legislation has condemned children for something that is no way comparable to what your brother did. The stupid act of sexting can land a teenager on the SOR for life; rather than focus on people who committed crimes like your brother, we now must focus on a homeless man who urinated in an alley way!

That being said, I, like several commenters below, actually went and looked up my zip code. All of them have ages listed; none were minors at the time of arrest. Sign up to to get the latest news direct to your inbox daily at 1pm. Puzzles hub. Visit our brain gym where you will find simple and cryptic crosswords, sudoku puzzles and much more. Updated at midnight every day. We would love to hear your feedback on the section right HERE. Judge urges siblings in battle over 'modest' estate to seek a compromise.

More in this section. Nphet to recommend return to working from home. Logistic regression is preferable to ordinary least square regression when the outcome variables is dichotomous.

In comparison to correlation coefficients, the logistic regression coefficients are less influenced by recidivism base rates and variability in the predictor variables. One way to interpret logistic regression coefficient is as the rate of change in recidivism rates for each year age increase; more specifically, e B is an odds ratio. For example, if B was -.

This value of. For small values of B, the percentage change in recidivism rates is approximately equal to the absolute value of B i. Curvilinear effects can be tested by entering the square of the predictor variable Y 2 after entering the predictor variable Y. Readers should be cautioned, however, that when Y and Y 2 are considered simultaneously, the value of their respective regression coefficients and their significant tests can be influenced by arbitrary features of scaling.

Consequently, the resulting regression coefficients do not provide a test of the relative magnitude of the linear and curvilinear effects. The regression coefficients for the curve components are presented, nonetheless, to indicate the direction of any potential curvilinear effects.

The combined sample included 4, sexual offenders. Excluded from the classification were 47 offenders who victimised both adult women and unrelated children and offenders for whom victim information was not available.

The classification, however, was based on limited information and the cross-over between victim types would likely be greater than that implied by the current classification.

Figure 1. This graph is a frequency distribution of sexual offenders by age. The vertical axis is labeled "Frequency" and has values that range from 0 on the bottom to on the top. Each of three histograms increase from age to a peak in the to range. The peak for the rapists is at age , for the extrafamilial child molesters the peak is age and for the incest offenders the peak is around age The sexual recidivism rate for the total sample was The correlation between age and sexual recidivism was -.

The separate analyses for the three groups are displayed in Table 2. In contrast, the highest risk age period for extrafamilial child molesters was not between the years of 18 to 24, but between the ages of 25 and The recidivism rate of the extrafamilial child molesters showed relatively little decline until after age Incest offenders showed a different pattern. The oldest recidivist in the sample was released at age 72 and was reconvicted for a sexual offence the following year.

Figure 2. This graph plots the sexual recidivism based on age categories and victim type. Three smoothed lines are presented, one for rapists, one for extra-familial child molesters, and one for incest offenders. All three lines descend from the upper left the age category to zero on the bottom right, indicating that the recidivism risk declines with age.

As with other criminal behaviour, the rate of sexual offending decreased with age. The rate of decline was rather gradual, however, and there were significant differences between types of sexual offenders. Extrafamilial child showed little decline in their recidivism risk until after the age of The highest risk period for extrafamilial child molesters was between the ages of 25 and In contrast, the young year old incest offenders were substantially higher risk than incest offenders from other age groups.

Although the recidivism rates for extrafamilial child molesters and rapists were similar, extrafamilial child molesters were, on average, older than rapists.

When age was controlled, the extrafamilial child molesters were at significantly higher risk for sexual recidivism than the rapists. Among the various factors linked to sexual offending, the three broad factors most relevant to the current study are deviant sexual interests motivation , opportunity, and low self-control. The distribution of these factors across offender types can help explain the age distribution of the offenders and the variation in their recidivism rates.

Although all sexual offenders engage in sexually deviant behaviour, most do not have an enduring preference for illegal sexual activities. Deviant sexual interests are more common among extrafamilial child molesters than incest offenders Marshall, It is difficult to directly compare the rate of deviant sexual interest among rapists with the rate among child molesters. Sexual interests exist on a continuum and it is not clear what level of sexual interest in violence corresponds to an equivalently deviant level of sexual interest in children.

Deviant sexual interests are likely to be more common among rapists than among incest offenders; whether rapists are more or less sexually deviant than extrafamilial child molesters is unknown.

To the extent that deviant sexual interests are an integral part of an offender's sexual life, then the persistence of sexual offending should mirror the persistence of the offender's sexual drive. The second major factor associated with sexual offending is low self-control or criminal lifestyle. Low self-control refers to the tendency to respond impulsively to short-term temptation, have little consideration for future consequences, and engage in high risk behaviours, such as drinking, driving fast, and sexual promiscuity.

The association between low self-control and criminal behaviour is sufficiently strong that Gottfredson and Hirshi consider it to be the cause of crime. It is not uncommon for researchers to include measures of antisocial behaviour in their definitions of impulsivity or low constraint e.

Self-control increases dramatically from childhood to adulthood. The extent to which it continues to develop in the adult years in less well established. Gottfredson and Hirschi believe that an individual's level of self-control changes little after it is initial formed in the family of origin. However, the age related decline in almost all impulsive, risky behaviour e. Low self-control is more common among rapists than child molesters. The research has yet to establish whether incest offenders and extrafamilial child molesters differ in lifestyle instability.

Miner and Dwyer found that incest offenders reported less problems with immediate gratification than extrafamilial child molesters, whereas Symbaluk found the reverse: incest offenders had more problems with low self-control than extrafamilial child molesters. The incest offenders and extrafamilial child molesters from Firestone et al.

The third factor related to sexual offending is opportunity. Unlike problems with self-control, which should diminish in early adulthood, and deviant sexual drives, which should diminish in later adulthood, the opportunities for child molesting should increase in middle adulthood.

Most child molesters exploit a relationship of trust with a known or related victim. The opportunities for establishing relationships with children are greatest between the late twenties and mid forties.

It is during this age period that men are most likely to have their own children, and to associate with friends and family who have children. The opportunities for rape, in contrast, should gradually decrease with age. Most rape victims are young women known to the offender. People tend to associated with people their same age; consequently, as men age, they would be expected to encounter fewer potential victims, and fewer circumstances in which rape is an easily available option e.

The three factors of sexual deviancy, self-control, and opportunity are consistent with the age-recidivism findings for the rapists and extrafamilial child molesters. For the rapists, all three factors should decline with age. Self-control should increase in young adulthood, deviant sexual drives should decrease in late adulthood, and the opportunities should gradually decline throughout.

If these factors are indeed important, then it is not surprising that most rapists are young and that their recidivism risk steadily declines with age. For extrafamilial child molesters, competing factors may be influencing recidivism risk during early to middle adulthood. Self-control should improve during the transition from the twenties to the thirties, but the opportunities for child molesting should increase.

It is not until late adulthood that the opportunities for relationships with children decline, and, combined with a reduction in sexual drive, contribute to a reduction in recidivism risk. This theory is consistent with the findings that child molesters are older than rapists, and that the recidivism rate of extrafamilial child molesters is relatively constant during the early and middle years of adulthood.

The theory outlined above provides only a partial fit to the finding for incest offenders. The peak frequency of incest offenders in the late thirties is consistent with increased opportunity for incestuous abuse during middle adulthood. As well, the low recidivism rates of incest offenders is consistent with their relatively low levels of deviant sexual interests compared to extrafamilial child molesters , moderately stable lifestyles compared to rapists , and reduced opportunity compared to other sexual offenders their available victim pool is restricted to family members.

The high recidivism rates of the young incest offenders, however, was unexpected. In the current study, the victims of the younger incest offenders were unknown, but were unlikely to be their own children.

The extent to which these young incest offenders resemble other sexual offenders e. All the offenders in the sample, however, would have been expected to have used overt force or selected a victim much younger than themselves. Relatively consensual sexual behaviour among siblings rarely invokes the serious criminal justice sanctions that were imposed on most offenders in this study.

This decline in late adulthood can be attributed to the confluence of decreasing sexual drive and decreasing opportunity. Perhaps the most salient factor for the oldest age groups, however, would be increasing ill health and eventual death. Medical records were not available for any of the samples analysed in this study; consequently, research has yet to examine the extent to which reductions in sexual recidivism risk should be expected for older offenders who remain in good health.

In the normal population, decreases in sexual interest and activities in later years are closely linked to concomitant illness Panser et al. In summary, this study found that the recidivism risk for sexual offenders decreased with age, but the overall effect was not large and the pattern of decline was different for rapists, extrafamilial child molesters and incest offenders.

Extrafamilial child molesters show relatively little decline in their recidivism risk until after the age of fifty. Sexual offenders released after the age of 60 showed very low recidivism rates 3. Although the factors of deviant sexual drive, low self-control and opportunity provide a plausible explanation for the findings, other explanations need to be considered. All of the data was cross-sectional rather than longitudinal; consequently, an apparent age-related decline in sexual offending could be explained by cohort effects.

Given that there are strong cohort effects in sexual behaviour e. Another consideration is that offenders' ages were measured at time of release and not the onset of offending. Consequently, the finding that child molesters were older than rapists could be attributed to a greater delay in the detection and prosecution of offences against children than for offences against adults.

Much of the age decline in sexual offending could also be attributed to a simple learning effect. With experience, men can learn that sex offending is not an effective route to happiness, or, more disturbingly, they can learn new and better ways to avoid detection.