Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994

Highlights 1

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2003

Presents, for the first time, data on the rearrest, reconviction, and reimprisonment of 9,691 male sex offenders, including 4,295 child molesters, who were tracked for 3 years after their release from prisons in 15 States in 1994. The 9,691 are two-thirds of all the male sex offenders released from prisons in the United States in 1994. The study represents the largest followup ever conducted of convicted sex offenders following discharge from prison and provides the most comprehensive assessment of their behavior after release.

Highlights include the following:

	Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime.
	On average the 9,691 sex offenders served 3½ years of their 8-year sentence.
	Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. [*]
	The 9,691 released sex offenders included 4,295 men who were in prison for child molesting.

[* This might be misleading. A reader with few experience in recidivism research and its statistics, might keep in mind only "four times more" and forget for a sex crime. The general ricidivism rate is 68%. For all crimes, this rate is for sex offenders 43%, which is lower, and 5.3% for sex crimes, which is not four times more but more than twelve time lower than the general recidivism rate. For child molesters this rate was 3.3%, a factor twenty lower than the general rate.
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