The use of actuarial risk assessment measures with UK internet child pornography offenders

The present study investigates the use of two actuarial assessment measures – Risk Matrix 2000 (Thornton et al, 2003) and Static 99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) – with individuals convicted of downloading child pornography on the internet. A UK community-based sample of convicted internet sex offenders (n = 73) was assessed using both a standard and a revised version of RM2000 and Static 99 and assessed for rates of reconviction. None of the offenders in the sample were convicted of a further sexual crime between a one-and-a-half and fouryear follow-up. These results suggest reconviction rates for internet sex offenders are lower than for contact child sex offenders. It was found that both the standard version of RM2000 and Static-99 overestimate the risk levels posed by internet offenders and that an adapted version of RM2000 may be a more realistic measure of risk level in this population. In addition, it was noted that a higher frequency of low-risk offenders appeared to be accessing images of younger children and images depicting more serious victimisation than high-risk offenders

Actuarial science · Business · Child pornography · Computer security · Injury prevention · Medical emergency · Poison control · Population · Pornography · Psychiatry · Recidivism · Risk assessment · Sample (material · Sociology · The Internet · Victimisation · Clinical Psychology · Computer Science · Demography · Medicine · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment

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