Abstract
The personality characteristics of child pornography offenders, health-related problems among children whose parents are serving a prison sentence, delinquent juveniles with high or low psychopathic traits, working with incarcerated offenders surviving their own abuse, abuse and victimization of offenders within the prison, and issues of the effectiveness of correctional programs for offenders depending on their ethnic status. These are the areas the current issue of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology deals with: areas that, on one hand, could not be more diverse but, on the other hand, could not be more intertwined with each other.
How should authorities react to child pornography consumption? Is it just a “venial sin,” even “helping” those pedophiles who are not engaged in the production of child pornography to be satisfied with those depictions so that they do not search for real victims, thereby keeping potential pedophiles from serious hands-on sex crimes? Or is it the starting point, the “gate-way drug” for hands-on sexual offenses, and should it therefore be punished rigorously, even with prison sentences? Magaletta and colleagues, by comparing Internet-only child pornography offenders (ICPO) with offenders having a history of child sexual abuse find the ICPO to be less aggressive and less dominant. Less aggressive and less dominant would probably translate into less psychopathic and more deviant (Eher, Neuwirth, Fruehwald, & Frottier, 2003). But can less psychopathic in this specific deviant offender group be automatically equated with less dangerous? And, as a consequence, would this mean that there is no need for incarcerating or detaining child pornography offenders?
Seto and Eke (2005) found that relapse rates of child pornography offenders were low in general and that those who were at a higher risk for reoffending, either generally or sexually, had committed prior contact sexual offenses. In a meta-analysis, Seto, Hanson, and Babchishin (2011) found one in eight online sex offenders (predominantly child pornography users) to have a history of contact sex offenses, but only 2% committed a new contact sex offense during follow-up. In another study, child pornography consumption was shown to be a more reliable predictor of pedophilia than committing pedosexual contact offenses (Seto, Cantor, & Blanchard, 2006).
The question whether there is need for incarceration and detention or not is not only important from a legal and punitive aspect but also most important from the aspect of how much harm might be caused as a consequence of incarceration. Tasca and colleagues impressively point out the damage imprisonment does to children of incarcerated parents. Not surprisingly, children of imprisoned mothers were shown to suffer the most from health problems.
Incarcerated women, however, often, if not always, have experienced their own victimization. Early experienced abuse was found to be associated with early onset and diverse criminality in females, but high rates of intimate partner violence also were reported within the female offender groups (Lake, 1993). Roe-Sepowitz and colleagues, in this issue, report on an abuse-focused group treatment for incarcerated women, leading to a significant decrease on trauma-associated symptoms.
Victimization also takes place in prisons. It is “the shame of our prisons” (Kaiser & Stannov, 2013). Juveniles are most often victims of (sexual) assaults within the prison. Kuo and colleagues explore the risk factors for such prison victimizations in Taiwan, supporting the findings of previous studies and providing clear policy implications. Juveniles are not only at high risk of being abused and mistreated in prisons but may also represent a violent and brutal offender group by themselves. By addressing this issue in their study, Pechorro and colleagues demonstrate that psychopathic juvenile offenders had lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of conduct disorder. Not only juvenile and female offenders but also offenders from minorities quite plainly demonstrate the abuse–abuser dilemma. A fortiori, it is of most relevance to demonstrate that offenders from various ethnic backgrounds are included in and can also benefit from correctional programs, as Usher and colleagues demonstrate in this issue.
It is hoped that all the articles in this issue will be of interest to those working directly or indirectly in the judicial system as they strive daily to bring help and justice to victim and victimizer alike.