Offending Histories and Typologies of Suspected Sexual Offenders Identified Via Untested Sexual Assault Kits

• Date: 01 April 2020
• Author: Joanna Klingenstein,Laura Overman,Daniel Flannery,Rachel Lovell,Wenxuan Huang
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854819896385
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2020, Vol. 47, No. 4, April 2020, 470 –486.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854819896385

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2019 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

470

OFFENDING HISTORIES AND TYPOLOGIES OF

SUSPECTED SEXUAL OFFENDERS IDENTIFIED

VIA UNTESTED SEXUAL ASSAULT KITS

RACHEL LOVELL

WENXUAN HUANG

LAURA OVERMAN

DANIEL FLANNERY

JOANNA KLINGENSTEIN

Case Western Reserve University

In this study, we present findings that detail the criminal offending histories and typologies of suspected sexual offenders

identified from an initiative to follow up on the testing of thousands of previously untested sexual assault kits (SAKs). This

study advances our understanding of sexual offenders by incorporating data from criminal justice system records (“detected”

criminal offending) with data from newly tested SAKs that were not previously adjudicated (“undetected” sexual offending).

Our findings demonstrate that these offenders have extensive criminal histories, very frequently continued to offend after the

SAK-associated sexual assault, and, more often than not, have criminal histories that do not include a prior arrest(s) for rape.

A latent class analysis identified three classes of offenders based on their offending history, “High-Volume Generalists,”

“Low-Volume Offenders,” and “Sexual Specialists.” Most were generalists, with a large proportion committing lots of serious

crimes.

Keywords: sexual assault; sexual offending; sexual assault kits (SAKs); latent class analysis; offender typologies

Sexual assault is a serious social and public health problem impacting a significant por-

tion of the population. Prevalence studies estimate that one in five women in the United

States have experienced attempted or completed forced penetration in their lifetime, and

one in 14 men have been forced to penetrate someone in their lifetime (Smith et al., 2015),

with approximately 95% of all sexual offenders being male (Cortoni & Hanson, 2005;

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This project was partially supported by Grant 2015-AK-BX-K009, 2016-AK-BX-K016,

and 2018-AK-BX-0001 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a

component of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of

Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,

the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. Points of view or opinions in this document are those

of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of

Justice. Pilot research was supported by a research grant from the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Prosecutor’s

Office. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rachel Lovell, Begun Center for

Violence Prevention Research and Education, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Ave, Cleveland,

OH 44106-7164; e-mail: rachel.lovell@case.edu.

896385CJBXXX10.1177/0093854819896385Criminal Justice and BehaviorLovell et al. / Sexual Offending Histories and Typologies

research-article2019

Lovell et al. / SEXUAL OFFENDING HISTORIES AND TYPOLOGIES 471

Sandler & Freeman, 2009). Estimates vary greatly as to how prevalent repeated sexual

offending is and how it relates to other types of criminal offending. This variation primarily

stems from the difficulty in measuring repeat offending, especially among sexual offenders,

and depends upon (a) which population is under observation (e.g., convicted sexual offenders,

college students, clinical samples of sexual offenders); (b) how offending and reoffending

is known and measured (e.g., self-report, arrest, and/or conviction from criminal justice

system records); and (c) the length of the follow-up period (e.g., 3–5 years postrelease,

lifetime prevalence). In addition, our understanding of how sexual offenders differ by the

types of crimes committed and the frequency with which they commit crimes is limited by

these same factors.

In this study, we describe the criminal histories and explore the typologies of suspected

sexual offenders identified through an initiative to test and follow up on the testing (via

investigation and prosecution) of thousands of previously untested sexual assault kits

(SAKs) in one urban jurisdiction. A SAK (also known as a rape kit) is a set of items used by

medical professionals for collecting and preserving evidence from a victim of sexual assault

for investigation and prosecution. The findings presented here improve our understanding

of sexual offenders’ criminal offending patterns by employing a unique dataset that com-

bines data from official criminal justice system records (“detected” criminal offending)

with data from suspected sexual offenders who were identified as part of the SAK initiative,

but had not been criminally adjudicated of the SAK-associated sexual assaults (e.g., did not

result in being found guilty, found not guilty, or having pled guilty; “undetected” sexual

offending).

SERIAL CRIMINALITY OF SEXUAL OFFENDERS

In most contexts, serial criminality is defined as committing two (Lovell et al., 2017;

Slater et al., 2014) or sometimes three or more separate incidents at two points in time for a

certain population of interest (Edelstein, 2016). Serial criminality most often implies adju-

dication in the criminal justice system (Deslauriers-Varin & Beauregard, 2013; Rebocho &

GonÇalves, 2012), meaning that the offender is connected to two or more crimes via arrest

and/or conviction.

Research shows that sexual offenders have high serial criminality rates, but the level and

nature of the criminality matter—sexual recidivism (reoffending for a sexually based crime)

and general recidivism (reoffending for any crime). The most recent recidivism rates of

sexual offenders in the United States come from a large representative sample of incarcer-

ated individuals released from 30 states in 2005 and followed for 9 years postrelease.

Nonsexual offenders have higher rearrest rates for any crime (general recidivism) compared

with sexual offenders (84% vs. 67%), but sexual offenders are 3 times as likely as nonsex-

ual offenders (8% vs. 2%) to be arrested for rape or sexual assault (Alper & Durose, 2019).

Recidivism rates increase as the follow-up period expands (Durose et al., 2014), and the

longer sexual offenders go without getting rearrested for a sexually based offense, the less

likely they are to get rearrested for another such offense (Harris & Hanson, 2004).

Sexual offenders frequently commit other types of crimes in addition to sexual offenses

(general recidivism). In a study of prisoners released in 1994, in 15 U.S. states, 3 years after

their release, 5% of sexual offenders were arrested for another sexually based crime and

43% for any crime (Langan et al., 2003). In addition, in an analysis of defendants from the