Citation

Collins E, Lennings C, Hare C, Seidler K. SAANZ 2018; 2018: e74.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Australian and New Zealand Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

With a growing number of offenders convicted of accessing child exploitation material via the Internet, the need to provide robust assessments of risk of reoffending is paramount in the fields of criminal justice and rehabilitation. Comprehensive risk assessment should consider both static and dynamic risk factors, and it is problematic, therefore, that there are currently no validated actuarial measures for use with Child Sexual Exploitation Material Offenders (CSEMOs) in Australia. The current article retrospectively explores the utility of the RM2000/S with a sample of 89 CSEMOs who were previously assessed using a dynamic risk protocol (the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol; RSVP, Hart et al., 2003), to identify whether the RM2000/S can offer more comprehensive assessment of psychologically meaningful risk factors. The current results reveal that the RM2000/S is more influenced by static factors (age and marital status) whilst the RSVP is largely impacted by social functioning variables. The findings suggest the RM2000/S adds important information in the assessment of risk for CSEMOs, and reinforces the need for a convergent approach combining actuarial and dynamic assessment approaches. Whilst further research including reconviction data is required to evidence the predictive value of the RM2000/s with CSEMOs in Australia, the present study provides a useful first step in exploring what it can contribute to the risk assessment arena.