What Do We Know About the Effect of Aging on Recidivism Risk for Sexual Offenders?

Meta-analytic and multiple sample study findings indicate there is an overall inverse relationship between sexual offenders' age at the time of their release from incarceration and their sexual recidivism risk (Hanson, 2002 ; Hanson & Bussière, 1998). Very recent studies, however, document limits to the generalizability of that finding. This article attempts to integrate the new empirical results into a coherent picture concerning the relationship between aging and recidivism risk for sexual offenders. The purpose is to determine the extent to which empirically-based conclusions can be drawn about how to incorporate the issue of offender age in sexual recidivism risk assessments. Overall, instead of finding straightforward conclusions of a practical nature, a series of study-specific conclusions were found that were often mutually exclusive. Further analyses of existing data were conducted in an attempt to tease out meaningful hypotheses concerning the relationship between offender age and sexual recidivism. Numerous potentially interacting variables were uncovered including participation in treatment, type of risk measure used, type of sexual offender, jurisdiction, and even a different measure of offender age. Implications of these findings are discussed.