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I don't get how something like this gets published: > The myth that those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend is pure fiction; numerous studies,

I don't get how something like this gets published: > The myth that those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend is pure fiction; numerous studies, including those cited the California Sex Offender Management Board's recent report, noted that sex offender re-offense rate is actually lower than any crime other than murder. Indeed, research shows that only about 5 percent of new sex offenses were committed by previous sex offenders. It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. The author tries to support his false debunking with two completely distinct statistics that do not speak one way or the other to the issue. Why doesn't Vox's fact checker flag this?

nosegoes 10y ago
Not to mention the fact that child molestation, for example, is almost never reported at the time by the child, or is hushed up by the family, etc. It is impossible to know the true re-offense rate for sex crimes because reporting is so low.
- zzalpha 10y ago
  It is impossible to know the true re-offense rate for sex crimes because reporting is so low. By that logic, it's equally impossible to know how frequently it goes unreported in the first place. So your statement in unsupportable based on your own reasoning. In short: Either we can rely on sexual offense reporting rates in order to make legal policy decisions, or we can't. You don't get to have it both ways and only rely on the data when it suits your agenda.
  - conflagrate 10y ago
    It's not impossible to know because people report they were molested long after the fact. There are a lot of estimates to the number of people molested as children (some say 1in 5), and the NYT article linked in another thread suggests that these numbers are falling and that currently about 50% of sex crimes against children are reported. Statute of limitations etc. It's not very black and white, you know.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      It's not impossible to know because people report they were molested long after the fact In which case we have the data for both reported and unreported offenses and can adjust the recidivism rate accordingly in order to make a reasonably accurate estimate of the real rate. Either the data can be relied upon, in which case we can know recidivism rates, or it can't and we don't. Again, you don't get to have it both ways.
      - conflagrate 10y ago
        That would be true if we knew who the offenders were. Part of the reason predators target children is because children do not tend to report and the details get fuzzy with time. I've talked to a lot of people doing counseling who said things like "a neighbor touched me" etc. but they don't remember names.
        zzalpha 10y ago
        It doesn't matter. If you know the reporting rate and the unreported rate, and you know the reported recidivism rate, a naïve scaling will get you close to the "real" recidivism rate.
Oletros 10y ago
> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. Do you have figures for that?
- jessriedel 10y ago
  No, I would appeal to your own common sense. But if you must, you can infer it from the recidivism rates (>5%) quoted elsewhere in this thread, which must be larger than the base rate.
  - wutbrodo 10y ago
    > if you must, you can infer it from the recidivism rates (>5%) quoted elsewhere in this thread, which must be larger than the base rate. This is quite an extraordinary claim; do you have any evidence that overall recidivism rates "must be" lower than 5%? From Wikipedia: > According to an April 2011 report by the Pew Center on the States, the average national recidivism rate for released prisoners is 43.3%.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      You misunderstand. The relevant base rate for my comment is the sexual offence rate in the general population.
      - wutbrodo 10y ago
        No, that was precisely my point. That is very much _not_ the relevant base rate because we're discussing recidivism, which is meaningless for non-offenders. That's like saying that the pregnancy rate isn't that low for US women aged 60-65 when compared to all US adults of any age (including the half that are physically incapable of pregnancy).
  - Oletros 10y ago
    Common sense doesn't work to gather actual data
falcolas 10y ago
> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re-offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to re-offend. This is much more accurate of an indicator - compared to their peers, sex offenders are much less likely to commit a crime again, yet they are the ones for whom the punishment never ends.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re-offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to re-offend. This is a silly comparison. Most crimes are much less serious than sexual assault, and so they simply happen more often period. (The recidivism rate for parking tickets is almost 100%!) The number of crimes which are at least as serious as sexual assault is much smaller. And all we know from this author is that one of them, murder, has a lower recidivism rate.
  - Vraxx 10y ago
    If we're comparing to the average prisoner then it filters out a lot of the chaff that you were suggesting (like parking tickets, which you do not go to prison for). I agree it's not a perfect metric, but it makes more sense than comparing to an average citizen who may or may not have even committed a crime.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      When we are deciding who's rights to infringe outside of prison to prevent future crimes, it is absolutely pertinent to compare the average citizen to the ex-con, in addition to many other factors like the severity of the future crime. This is especially true because the author isn't arguing that we should be making other ex-cons register (inviting the comparison between the recitivism of sexual ex-cons and non-sexual ex-cons), he's arguing that we shouldn't make sexual ex-cons register because it's ineffective and cruel. The other types of criminals are basically orthogonal to this argument.
wutbrodo 10y ago
> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. You've grossly misunderstood the context here. "Reoffend" means "commit an offense _again_", which is meaningless in the context of someone who's never offended (a large portion of the "citizens" population). When considering "more likely [than whom] to reoffend", the only interpretation that makes any sense at all is "more likely [than the average offender] to re-offend". It should be quite clear that it's complete nonsense to compare the likelihood of re-offending with a population that consists largely of those for whom reoffending is impossible (which is what you're doing in your comment).
- jessriedel 10y ago
  That's an incorrect reading of that statement. Imagine the author had written "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to offend". This sentence is confusing or trivial, because those who commit sex crimes are offenders by definition. So the author could write "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to offend again". But then according to your logic, this couldn't be applied to the general population since they hadn't offended yet, so could never "offend again". If we are considering a baseball team down with a runner on third with two outs in the bottom of ninth, and of the next two batters (Jackson and Smith), only one has gotten a hit today (Jackson), would you consider this sentence trivially true?: "Jackson is more likely to get another hit than Smith?" Because Smith can't "get another hit"? No. And as I've already addressed elsewhere, the comparison to other convicts doesn't make sense in the first place for the author's argument.
erroneousfunk 10y ago
In the study the author linked to, it says that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3% -- lower than most of the other rates that the author mentions. He simply uses the "only 5 percent of new sex offenses..." statistic to make a point, and view the data from another angle. There's nothing misleading about it, and the author didn't misinterpret the data. Coincidentally, the numbers happen to be similar. When you say "It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen." to point out the author's logical "mistake," I believe you might be misunderstanding the data as well. You have some number of sex offenses, SO, and some population P, that contains some number of sex offenders, P_O. .053 x P_O = sex offenders who reoffend SO x .05 = Sex offenses caused by reoffenders SO x .95 = Some subset of the general population, P, that commits a sex offense. Only if .95SO = .053(P-P_O) does the rate of reoffense by sex offenders equal the rate of sex offense by the general non-offender population (with some simplifications like "people commit one offense at a time, then are persecuted, the only people who have committed two offenses are reoffenders"), which requires a LOT more information to decide, and is probably not true
erroneousfunk 10y ago
In the study the author linked to, it says that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3% -- lower than most of the other rates that the author mentions. He simply uses the "only 5 percent of new sex offenses..." statistic to make a point, and view the data from another angle. There's nothing misleading about it, and the author didn't misinterpret the data. Coincidentally, the numbers happen to be similar. When you say "It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen." to point out the author's logical "mistake," I believe you might be misunderstanding the data as well. You have some number of sex offenses, SO, and some population P, that contains some number of sex offenders, P_O. .053 x P_O = sex offenders who reoffend SO x .05 = Sex offenses caused by reoffenders SO x .95 = Some subset of the general population, P, that commits a sex offense. Only if .95SO = .053P does the rate of reoffense by sex offenders equal the rate of sex offense by the general population, which requires a LOT more information to decide, and is probably not true. Note: I'm making some simplifications like "people commit one offense at a time, then are prosecuted", "the only people who have committed two offenses are reoffenders" but if you know a better way to think about this, I'm all ears.

nosegoes 10y ago

Not to mention the fact that child molestation, for example, is almost never reported at the time by the child, or is hushed up by the family, etc. It is impossible to know the true re-offense rate for sex crimes because reporting is so low.

zzalpha 10y ago
It is impossible to know the true re-offense rate for sex crimes because reporting is so low. By that logic, it's equally impossible to know how frequently it goes unreported in the first place. So your statement in unsupportable based on your own reasoning. In short: Either we can rely on sexual offense reporting rates in order to make legal policy decisions, or we can't. You don't get to have it both ways and only rely on the data when it suits your agenda.
- conflagrate 10y ago
  It's not impossible to know because people report they were molested long after the fact. There are a lot of estimates to the number of people molested as children (some say 1in 5), and the NYT article linked in another thread suggests that these numbers are falling and that currently about 50% of sex crimes against children are reported. Statute of limitations etc. It's not very black and white, you know.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    It's not impossible to know because people report they were molested long after the fact In which case we have the data for both reported and unreported offenses and can adjust the recidivism rate accordingly in order to make a reasonably accurate estimate of the real rate. Either the data can be relied upon, in which case we can know recidivism rates, or it can't and we don't. Again, you don't get to have it both ways.
    - conflagrate 10y ago
      That would be true if we knew who the offenders were. Part of the reason predators target children is because children do not tend to report and the details get fuzzy with time. I've talked to a lot of people doing counseling who said things like "a neighbor touched me" etc. but they don't remember names.
      - zzalpha 10y ago
        It doesn't matter. If you know the reporting rate and the unreported rate, and you know the reported recidivism rate, a naïve scaling will get you close to the "real" recidivism rate.

Oletros 10y ago

> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. Do you have figures for that?

jessriedel 10y ago
No, I would appeal to your own common sense. But if you must, you can infer it from the recidivism rates (>5%) quoted elsewhere in this thread, which must be larger than the base rate.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  > if you must, you can infer it from the recidivism rates (>5%) quoted elsewhere in this thread, which must be larger than the base rate. This is quite an extraordinary claim; do you have any evidence that overall recidivism rates "must be" lower than 5%? From Wikipedia: > According to an April 2011 report by the Pew Center on the States, the average national recidivism rate for released prisoners is 43.3%.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    You misunderstand. The relevant base rate for my comment is the sexual offence rate in the general population.
    - wutbrodo 10y ago
      No, that was precisely my point. That is very much _not_ the relevant base rate because we're discussing recidivism, which is meaningless for non-offenders. That's like saying that the pregnancy rate isn't that low for US women aged 60-65 when compared to all US adults of any age (including the half that are physically incapable of pregnancy).
- Oletros 10y ago
  Common sense doesn't work to gather actual data

falcolas 10y ago

> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re-offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to re-offend. This is much more accurate of an indicator - compared to their peers, sex offenders are much less likely to commit a crime again, yet they are the ones for whom the punishment never ends.

jessriedel 10y ago
> How about vs. the average prisoner? Figures from other threads show that re-offend rates for other crimes are anywhere from 15x to 35x more likely to re-offend. This is a silly comparison. Most crimes are much less serious than sexual assault, and so they simply happen more often period. (The recidivism rate for parking tickets is almost 100%!) The number of crimes which are at least as serious as sexual assault is much smaller. And all we know from this author is that one of them, murder, has a lower recidivism rate.
- Vraxx 10y ago
  If we're comparing to the average prisoner then it filters out a lot of the chaff that you were suggesting (like parking tickets, which you do not go to prison for). I agree it's not a perfect metric, but it makes more sense than comparing to an average citizen who may or may not have even committed a crime.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    When we are deciding who's rights to infringe outside of prison to prevent future crimes, it is absolutely pertinent to compare the average citizen to the ex-con, in addition to many other factors like the severity of the future crime. This is especially true because the author isn't arguing that we should be making other ex-cons register (inviting the comparison between the recitivism of sexual ex-cons and non-sexual ex-cons), he's arguing that we shouldn't make sexual ex-cons register because it's ineffective and cruel. The other types of criminals are basically orthogonal to this argument.

wutbrodo 10y ago

> It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen. You've grossly misunderstood the context here. "Reoffend" means "commit an offense _again_", which is meaningless in the context of someone who's never offended (a large portion of the "citizens" population). When considering "more likely [than whom] to reoffend", the only interpretation that makes any sense at all is "more likely [than the average offender] to re-offend". It should be quite clear that it's complete nonsense to compare the likelihood of re-offending with a population that consists largely of those for whom reoffending is impossible (which is what you're doing in your comment).

jessriedel 10y ago
That's an incorrect reading of that statement. Imagine the author had written "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to offend". This sentence is confusing or trivial, because those who commit sex crimes are offenders by definition. So the author could write "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to offend again". But then according to your logic, this couldn't be applied to the general population since they hadn't offended yet, so could never "offend again". If we are considering a baseball team down with a runner on third with two outs in the bottom of ninth, and of the next two batters (Jackson and Smith), only one has gotten a hit today (Jackson), would you consider this sentence trivially true?: "Jackson is more likely to get another hit than Smith?" Because Smith can't "get another hit"? No. And as I've already addressed elsewhere, the comparison to other convicts doesn't make sense in the first place for the author's argument.

erroneousfunk 10y ago

In the study the author linked to, it says that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3% -- lower than most of the other rates that the author mentions. He simply uses the "only 5 percent of new sex offenses..." statistic to make a point, and view the data from another angle. There's nothing misleading about it, and the author didn't misinterpret the data. Coincidentally, the numbers happen to be similar. When you say "It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen." to point out the author's logical "mistake," I believe you might be misunderstanding the data as well. You have some number of sex offenses, SO, and some population P, that contains some number of sex offenders, P_O. .053 x P_O = sex offenders who reoffend SO x .05 = Sex offenses caused by reoffenders SO x .95 = Some subset of the general population, P, that commits a sex offense. Only if .95SO = .053(P-P_O) does the rate of reoffense by sex offenders equal the rate of sex offense by the general non-offender population (with some simplifications like "people commit one offense at a time, then are persecuted, the only people who have committed two offenses are reoffenders"), which requires a LOT more information to decide, and is probably not true

erroneousfunk 10y ago

In the study the author linked to, it says that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 5.3% -- lower than most of the other rates that the author mentions. He simply uses the "only 5 percent of new sex offenses..." statistic to make a point, and view the data from another angle. There's nothing misleading about it, and the author didn't misinterpret the data. Coincidentally, the numbers happen to be similar. When you say "It's obviously true that "those who commit sex crimes are more likely to reoffend" than the average citizen." to point out the author's logical "mistake," I believe you might be misunderstanding the data as well. You have some number of sex offenses, SO, and some population P, that contains some number of sex offenders, P_O. .053 x P_O = sex offenders who reoffend SO x .05 = Sex offenses caused by reoffenders SO x .95 = Some subset of the general population, P, that commits a sex offense. Only if .95SO = .053P does the rate of reoffense by sex offenders equal the rate of sex offense by the general population, which requires a LOT more information to decide, and is probably not true. Note: I'm making some simplifications like "people commit one offense at a time, then are prosecuted", "the only people who have committed two offenses are reoffenders" but if you know a better way to think about this, I'm all ears.