Participants wrote 2 narratives that described an incident in which they angered or hurt someone (offender) or in which someone angered or hurt them (victim) and the offense was forgiven or not forgiven. Victims portrayed the offense as continuing (open), and offenders portrayed the offense as over (closed). Forgiveness narratives portrayed offenses as closed and with positive outcomes; however...

The purpose of the study was to determine the clinical and demographic characteristics of elderly sexual offenders at a maximum-security forensic hospital. Charts of male elderly patients charged with sexual offenses were reviewed to obtain clinical and demographic data. The majority of sexual offenders had mood or psychotic disorders. Almost one third had a history of violent or assaultive beh...

The objective was to assess the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in offenders who undergo forensic psychiatric evaluation (FPE), compare differences with regard to the prevalence of PTSD between immigrants and Swedes, compare psychiatric comorbidity and offenses between PTSD and non-PTSD patients, and compare various instruments and questionnaires when assessing the level of ...

Sex abusers' denial of their offenses poses serious problems for their victims, treatment providers, and researchers. Abusers deny their offenses for many reasons, including avoiding responsibility. It is possible that some abusers do not recall their offenses because of intoxication, head injury, or dissociative symptoms that affect their ability to encode or retrieve information. Self-reports...

Many countries in the 1970s introduced reforms in rape law with differing focus and extensiveness and along with these reforms, the descriptions of rape and sexual intercourse were broadened to include a series of sexual aggravated offenses such as the expansions of intercourse, which included oral and anal penetration in addition to vaginal penetration [1,2]. In England and Wales towards the l...

OBJECTIVE Despite large numbers of mentally ill offenders in prisons, few studies of mentally ill offenders released from prison have been conducted. This study describes such a population of mentally ill offenders, the postrelease services they received, new offenses they committed, and factors associated with recidivism. METHODS The authors reviewed electronic files and archived medical cha...

In this research, juvenile offenses and associated behaviors among adolescent inhalant users in Istanbul were investigated and inhalant users living in the street were compared to inhalant users living with their families. An interview questionnaire developed by the researchers was administered to 200 male adolescent inhalant users who were hospitalized during 2002-2003. More than half of the s...

As courts often rely on clinicians when differentiating between sexually abusive youth at a low versus high risk of reoffense, understanding factors that contribute to accuracy in assessment of risk is imperative. The present study built on existing research by examining (1) the accuracy of clinical judgments of risk made after completing risk assessment instruments, (2) whether instrument-info...

This article examines associations between self-reported religious affiliations and official offense histories among 111 incarcerated adult male sexual offenders. Four categories of religiosity were devised according to self-reported continuities and discontinuities in life-course religious affiliations: atheists, dropouts, converts, and stayers. ANCOVAs indicated that stayers (those who mainta...

Because juveniles can now be registered as sex offenders, we conducted a pilot study to investigate awareness of these policies and sexual behavior histories in a convenience sample of 53 young adults (ages 18 to 23, 79% women). These preliminary data revealed that 42% percent of participants were unaware that youth under the age of 18 can be registered as sex offenders, and when informed that ...