Ghossoub Elias, Harake Nadia El
Dr. Ghossoub is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, and Dr. El Harake is a Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law. 2023 Dec 8;51(4):500-505. doi: 10.29158/JAAPL.230057-23.
There is limited research on female sex offenders and their offending characteristics. The sociocultural description of women as being nurturing, nonaggressive and, more significantly, nonsexual has diverted the attention from female sexual offending. Although reports have shown that female sex offenders make up two percent of the whole sex offender population, the true rate is remarkably higher because the caretaking behavior of women masks their sexual offenses. The purpose of our study is to explore the characteristics of female sex offenders. We analyzed the publicly available Missouri sex offender registry database and selected all female sex offenders ( = 532) of any age who committed their crimes in Missouri and were convicted in Missouri. We found that the 532 female offenders had a mean age of 29.8 years at the time of their first offense and were convicted for a total of 992 offenses. The calculated recidivism rate was close to 0.6 percent. Moreover, 89.5 percent of offenders had strictly contact offenses, whereas five percent had strictly pornography offenses. Implications for risk assessment are discussed.
关于女性性犯罪者及其犯罪特征的研究有限。社会文化将女性描述为有养育之心、不具攻击性，更重要的是无性方面的特征，这转移了人们对女性性犯罪的注意力。尽管报告显示女性性犯罪者占整个性犯罪者群体的2%，但实际比例要高得多，因为女性的照顾行为掩盖了她们的性犯罪行为。我们研究的目的是探索女性性犯罪者的特征。我们分析了公开可用的密苏里州性犯罪者登记数据库，选取了所有在密苏里州犯罪并在该州被定罪的任何年龄的女性性犯罪者（n = 532）。我们发现，这532名女性犯罪者首次犯罪时的平均年龄为29.8岁，她们总共被定罪992项罪行。计算出的累犯率接近0.6%。此外，89.5%的犯罪者有严格意义上的接触性犯罪，而5%的犯罪者有严格意义上的色情犯罪。文中还讨论了对风险评估的影响。
