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Abstract
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I am very excited to be introducing you to my special issue for Sexual Abuse, focusing on “International Developmental/Life-Course Perspectives and Research on Sexual Offending and Offenders.”
As readers of this journal are well aware, there has been a considerable amount of literature that has documented that the sexual recidivism rates of persons with sexual offense histories are very low, persons with sexual offense histories do not tend to specialize in a specific type of sex offense or sex offenses in general, and that the continuity of sexual offending behavior from adolescence into adulthood is also rare (Piquero et al., 2012; Reingle, 2012; Zimring et al., 2007). Furthermore, these empirical “facts” are identifiable in research in countries all over the world (Cortoni et al., 2010; Hanson, 2002; Nisbet et al., 2004; Piquero et al., 2012; Zimring et al., 2007). Having said this, what has been slower to develop in this area of research is an overarching theoretical scaffolding or framework to contextualize these research findings and to inform further empirical inquiry.
This gap in the literature was one of the driving features behind the development of an international “Sex Offenders in and out of Crime” symposium that was hosted in Brussels, Belgium, in March 2018. This symposium was widely attended by academics, practitioners, and members of the community. As this symposium broadly focused on the criminal careers of persons with sexual offense histories, longitudinal analyses, risk/protective factors, continuity, onset, desistance, and so on, it soon led to rich discussions and conversations and an interest and need in brainstorming methods for disseminating these kind of developmentally/life-course-informed studies. These conversations and inquiries ultimately led to the development of the call-for-papers for this special issue.
Language: en |