Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women (2004) / Chapter Skim
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5 Identifying and Treating Offenders
5 Identifying and Treating Offenders
Pages 83-95
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From page 83... ...
In addition, researchers are formulating theories to categorize rapists, batterers, and other types of individuals who victimize women and others and exploring what treatments may help prevent offenders from repeating their behaviors. CHARACTERISTICS OF OFFENDERS Motivations of Men Who Rape Explanations for why men rape range from individual determinantssuch as physiology and neurophysiology, personality traits, attitudes, alcohol abuse, and psychopathology to sex and power motives, social learning theories, dyadic contexts, institutional influences, societal influences, and multifactorial models (for a review see National Research Council, 1996~.
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From page 84... ...
Their model identifies nine types of rapists falling into one of four descriptive summary categories based on motivation: opportunistic, pervasively angry, sexual, and vindictive. For opportunistic rapists, sexual assault was found to be an impulsive, usually unplanned, predatory act, occasioned more by contextual and immediately antecedent factors than by protracted or stylized sexual fantasy.
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From page 85... ...
theorize that family-only batterers engage in aggressive acts as a result of a combination of stress (personal and/or marital) and low-level risk factors, including childhood exposure to marital violence and a lack of relationship skills.
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From page 86... ...
For example, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study identified developmental pathways to violent behavior, including partner violence (see Moffitt et al., 2001~. Data from this study suggest that antisocial behavior is predictable across time.
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From page 87... ...
The committee believes that future research should focus on learning more about perpetrators of violence generally and use this information as the context for specific studies of domestic violence. In the past, research on domestic violence has not taken theories of general violence into account, focusing instead on theories of patriarchy and power relations without considering possible explanatory variables from other disciplines or from the longitudinal literature on the development of violent behavior (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1998~.
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From page 88... ...
As noted throughout this report, researchers and practitioners might benefit from placing their work in the broader context of violent criminals in general and discussing domestic violence and sexual assault as subtypes of general criminal offending. Types of Treatment Programs Programs for both domestic violence offenders and sex offenders tend to integrate several approaches through a number of phases that first expand offenders' definitions of abuse and hold them responsible for it, and then teach them alternative reactions and behaviors (Gondolf, 1997; Freeman-Longo et al., 1995~.
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From page 89... ...
Sex role Helps men see the negative Rigid socialization of constricted resocialization effects of constricted male roles male roles results in male Building awareness of control tactics Family systems approaches and the benefits of gender equality (Saunders, 1984~. Helps men take ownership of their intentions to control others (Pence and Paymar, 1994~.
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From page 90... ...
SOURCE: Saunders and Hamill (2002~. Outcome Studies Research on treatment outcomes has only begun to emerge and is in general of poor quality.
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From page 91... ...
report the results of several recent metaanalyses of outcomes of sex offender treatment programs. The most rigorous such analysis, coordinated by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, involved 42 studies of psychological treatment in both community and institutional settings (Hanson et al., 2000~.
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From page 92... ...
Areas for further research that may prove fruitful include matching of offender types to types of treatment and matching of treatment to the motivational stage of the offender. Recognition of how types of offenders differ along key theoretical dimensions, such as developmental background, social context, and mental disorder, should be part of the conceptual development and testing of offender interventions (Fagan, 1996~.
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From page 93... ...
Practitioners in programs for domestic violence offenders may be required to warn or protect potential victims if they believe lethal violence is imminent (Hart, 1988; McNeill, 1987~. They may also be asked to make predictions about the recurrence of severe violence in order to provide specialized treatment or recommend closer supervision.
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From page 94... ...
Of the measures frequently used in the evaluation of sex offenders, a recent study of predictive validity showed that the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide, RRASOR, and Static-99 were best at predicting sexual recidivism (Barbaree et al., 2001~. Research on predicting sex offender recidivism may benefit from the more-general research on risk prediction devices for serious offending (see, e.g., Lattimore et al., 1995~.
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From page 95... ...
Research should also address women who commit violent acts, and should further explore interactions between women's experiences of violent victimization and their own violent offending. Despite an accumulation of studies evaluating programs for domestic violence offenders, rigorous studies are few, and firm conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions cannot be drawn.
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