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This paper aims to explore treatment implications of the self‐regulation model (SRM) for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability in an effort to provide practical applications that could be employed in treatment.

The SRM of sexual offending proposes that difficulties in self‐regulation may lead to an increased risk of sexual offending; describing four potential pathways to sexual offending that are based on self‐regulation style and offence‐related goals. Research has focussed on the application and implications of this theoretical model for mainstream sexual offenders. However, more recently, there has been an increasing interest into the application and treatment implications for the SRM for sexual offenders with an intellectual disability. This paper reviews literature on both the SRM and related work on offenders with intellectual disability.

The evidence reviewed supports the notion that the SRM is a valid theoretical model on which to base treatment programmes for people with intellectual disabilities and specific recommendations are made for the design of treatment programmes with this client group.

It is suggested that this model should be used when devising intervention programmes for people with intellectual disabilities in the future.

The relationship between accessing indecent images online and the perpetration of contact child sex offences remains unclear. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the offence process of offenders who have both such convictions.

A total of eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adult males who had downloaded indecent images and also had a history of contact sex offences against children. Data analysis involved thematic coding based on guidelines suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006).

Themes which emerged suggest some similarities (offence process behaviours), but also some differences (developmental factors) between the eight offenders. Data relevant to developmental factors formed two primary themes: childhood attachment difficulties and experiences of childhood abuse, both of which appeared to influence the offence process. Escalating factors generated a further three themes: adult relationships, personality problems and substance use. Five main categories also emerged with regard to offence behaviours: sexually deviant interests, lack of self-control, opportunity, the role of the internet (availability, easy access and anonymity), and cognitive distortions (justifications: interest in challenge and sexual frustration; denial: accidental access and denial of a victim, normalisation; blame: blame on the victim, new technologies and authorities and blame on other factors; and minimisation).

A better understanding of the offence process would inform clinical practice with such offenders and aid in the process of prevention.

This is the first research to date which explores the rationale provided for their behaviour by those convicted of both internet and contact child sex offences.

Traditional crime linkage studies on serial sexual assaults have relied predominantly on a binary crime linkage approach that has yielded successful results in terms of linkage accuracy. Such an approach is a coarse reflection of reality by focussing mainly on the outcome of an offence, neglecting the forceful differences due to the intricate offender-victim interaction. Only few researchers have examined sexual assaults through the lens of a sequence analysis framework. This paper aims to present the first empirical test of offence sequence-based crime linkage, moving beyond exploratory analyses.

Offence accounts from 90 serial sexual assault and rape victims from the UK were analysed and sequentially coded. Sequence analysis allowed to compare all offences combinations regarding their underlying sequence of events. The resulting comparison was transformed and plotted in two-dimensional space by multidimensional scaling analysis for a visual inspection of linkage potential. The transformed proximities of all offences were used as predictors in a receiver operating characteristic analysis to actually test their discriminatory accuracy for crime linkage purpose.

Sequence analysis shows significant discriminatory accuracy for crime linkage purpose. However, the method does perform less well than previous binary crime linkage studies.

Several limitations due to the nature of the data will be discussed.

The practical limitations are as follows: the study is a potential practical value for crime analysts; it is a complimentary methodology for statistical crime linkage packages; it requires automated coding to be useful; and it is very dependent on crime recoding standards.

The exploratory part of this study has been published in a book chapter in 2015. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the succinct test of crime linkage accuracy is the first of its kind.

There is substantial evidence that young people moving from child and adolescent mental health services to adult services are more likely to experience poor transitions. However, little is known about the care pathways of young people transitioning from forensic services. This retrospective case note review sought to examine the clinical characteristics, transition pathways and psychosocial indicators of transition outcomes amongst young people in forensic medium secure services discharged to adult services.

The electronic records of 32 young people, who transitioned from six adolescent medium secure units in England to adult services between May 2015 and June 2016, were examined.

Approximately 65% of young people were between 18 and 19 years at the time of transition and the average waiting time from referral to discharge was six months. A total of 63% young people transitioned to community placements and adult medium secure services. Four pathways describing the journey into and out of adolescent medium secure services were identified in a subsample of 12 young people. A total of 25% young people with neurodevelopmental problems moved to specialist services.

The results suggest that diagnosis, severity of offence and clinical background are associated with transition pathway. Promoting a person-centred approach and gradual independence of the young person may improve current practice.

These results inform existing policy and clinical practice in an effort to reform transition guidelines around young people’s needs during transition times. Further studies in adolescent forensic services are needed to understand complex neurodevelopmental problems and comorbidities.

There are a limited number of risk assessment tools relevant to the internet child abuse material (I/CAM) offender cohort. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new tool, the “Estimated Risk for Internet Child Sexual Offending” (ERICSO). The ERICSO has been developed to assist in the treatment and prevention of sexual crimes against children.

The ERICSO was developed through a multi-stage process including systematic review, survey of professionals and offender case study.

An empirically guided tool for estimating risk for I/CAM offenders, the ERICSO is composed of four domains. The Demographic domain questions provide information about the offender, while Collection domain questions address the content of the offender’s files. The Nature of Engagement domain considers the offender’s interaction with I/CAM, behavioural aspects and contact with children. The Social Aspect domain questions address the offender’s engagement with other I/CAM users. Finally, the assessor may use Structured Professional Judgement to provide additional information, and a summary of the offender’s relevant circumstances and a risk estimation.

The ERICSO provides guidance for the assessment of I/CAM offenders who may reoffend with online child sexual offences, and I/CAM offenders who may reoffend with contact child sexual offences.

Born from a history of generational attitudes towards rehabilitation and risk assessment, the launch of the ERICSO presents an exciting opportunity in the risk estimation of I/CAM offenders.

Internet child abuse material (I/CAM) offences negatively affect children in our own communities and in the wider virtual world. This study aims to understand the differentiation between online (internet) and offline (contact) offenders. The development of the Estimated Risk for Internet Child Sexual Offending (ERICSO), a proposed instrument for I/CAM offenders, incorporated a case study component to test on a known offender before the tool is applied to a wider sample.

The case study approach provides a unique opportunity for researchers to consider reflections from an I/CAM offender. These insights provide unique perspectives on areas for further exploration, including suggestions for consideration in the assessment and treatment of I/CAM offenders.

Mr A is a male convicted of possessing I/CAM with previous convictions for contact child sexual offending. During the development of the ERICSO, Mr A provided commentary on proposed questions based on his experiences as an offender and his communications with other offenders. Mr A’s feedback was generally consistent with current research findings, with notable suggestions in recognising the importance of differentiating between fantasy/reality, violence/voyeurism and the role technology plays in I/CAM offences. These reflections will be considered in conjunction with ongoing development and validity studies of the ERICSO to contribute to the targeted assessment and risk-relevant treatment for I/CAM offenders.

The use of a case study in the development of a proposed assessment instrument provides a unique perspective to improve ecological validity.

Traditionally, the focus in psychology has been to relieve suffering in matters such as mental illness. In forensic interventions, the focus has been similar, with an emphasis on the removal of offence‐related behaviours and thinking. That is, therapy has focused on ‘fixing’ what appears to be broken. More recent thinking in the positive psychology literature focuses on the importance of enhancing well‐being and happiness in clients and enhancing the client's own strengths and positive experiences. In turn, positive psychology adopts a strengths‐based approach to working therapeutically with clients. Positive psychology has a number of potential implications for working with forensic clients and the delivery of therapy and relapse prevention blocks. This paper will explores the potential application of positive psychology literature to offending behaviour interventions. Specifically, it focuses on the process of relapse‐prevention and self‐management, within the framework of the Self‐Regulation Model of the Relapse Process (SRM‐RP).

There are limited risk assessment tools validated for use with the internet child abuse material (I/CAM) offender cohort. Developed through a multi-stage process, the purpose of this paper is to present the “Estimated Risk for Internet Child Sexual Offending” (ERICSO), a new tool for I/CAM offender assessment, including demographic, collection, nature of engagement and social domains, plus a structured professional judgement section. Validation studies remain ongoing.

This paper presents a case series analysis of six Australian men, including two Aboriginal men, convicted of I/CAM offences to pilot proposed ERICSO domains and commence validation against the short self-esteem scale, University of California Los Angles loneliness scale, internet sex screening test and the sexual violence risk-20 V2.

Participants of all ages generally reported histories of mental health diagnosis and/or treatment and substance abuse. Two participants reported prior sexual offending, one for I/CAM offences. Participants expressed sexual preferences for female child victims and were convicted of possessing thousands of I/CAM files. Two participants reported accessing I/CAM for over six and 10 years, respectively, before detection by law enforcement.

Preliminary implications indicate ERICSO higher scores are consistent with I/CAM offenders having more online sexual behaviour diversity and more areas of risk/treatment need. For example, participants with problematic self-esteem and loneliness in our data set have higher ERICSO scores. Social connectedness may be a relevant factor though definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from the small sample size.

The ERICSO presents novel assessment of factors in considering treatment targets in addressing both illegal I/CAM and problematic legal sexual behaviours.

While there is a significant proportion of people with a mild intellectual disability (MID) or borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) who commit sexual offenses, little research has focused on the risk factors for sexual recidivism in people with MID-BIF. The purpose of this paper is to compare the scores on the STATIC-99R and STABLE-2007 between persons with sexual offense histories with and without MID-BIF.

Data using the STATIC-99R and STABLE-2007 were collected in 85 male patients divided into an MID-BIF group (IQ 50–85, n=50) and comparison group (IQ>95, n=35).

The MID-BIF group and comparison group did not differ significantly on the static risk factors and total score of the STATIC-99R. However, of the 13 dynamic risk factors of the STABLE-2007, the MID-BIF group scored significantly higher on the items Impulsive acts, Poor problem solving skills and Lack of concern for others, while the comparison group scored significantly higher on the item Deviant sexual preference.

The higher score on a number of dynamic risk factors for patients with MID-BIF could partly be explained by the characteristics associated with MID-BIF. Although dynamic criminogenic risk factors which are usually identified as targets for treatment appear the same for people with and without MID-BIF who commit sexual offenses, adaptations to the modality of treatment will still need to be made for people with MID-BIF.

This article sets out to explore three differing approaches from three agencies to supporting and treating people with a learning/intellectual disability who have sexually offended. The three agencies are: Waymarks in the United Kingdom, York Central Hospital Behaviour Management Services and Vita Community Living Services both in Ontario, Canada. Each agency provides services to a similar population of offenders with disabilities. Though each client engaged in vastly different behaviour, all clients have been identified as having sex offending history and as having a high likelihood of offending again in the future. As the organisations evolved, differing approaches to the provision of service developed. For the three agencies, it can be argued that there was a very limited range of theoretical models available when each organisation developed. Consequently each agency developed their service according to the needs and ‘best fit’ of the people they were supporting with the available resources at that time. This meant that services developed as a direct response to the need and were designed to best fit the need with the resources to hand at the time. As a result, three different models of service arose, all of which have had real success with meeting the needs of people with learning/intellectual disabilities who have sexually offended, while providing support and treatment in differing ways. This article will examine some of those differences.