Therapeutic and risk relevance of psychopathy and general criminal attitude change in an institutional sexual offense treatment program.

We examined the interrelationships between psychopathy, changes in general criminal attitudes, and community recidivism in a sample of 212 men who attended an institutional sexual offense treatment program (SOTP) and were followed for an average of 12.73 years post-release. The men completed a self-report measure of general criminal attitudes, the Criminal Sentiments Scale, as part of routine SOTP service delivery, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) ratings were completed via file review, and recidivism data were obtained from official criminal records. Criminal attitude endorsement and criminal attitude change had clinically meaningful, but differential, associations with the antisocial and interpersonal features of psychopathy. Further, positive changes in criminal attitudes-particularly tolerance of law violations (i.e., rationalizations for criminal behavior)-were significantly predictive of reductions in community violent and general recidivism after controlling for PCL-R score. Results demonstrate that general criminal attitude change has risk relevance in the treatment of high psychopathy persons with sexual offense histories.

Empirically-based dynamic risk and protective factors for sexual offending.

This review provides an overview and update of empirical evidence for psychologically meaningful dynamic risk factors and protective factors for sexual offending. Using the review by Mann et al. (2010) as a starting point, we reviewed relevant literature that has appeared since this publication, focusing on meta-analyses, systematic and scoping reviews of dynamic risk factors, recent evaluations of commonly used dynamic assessment tools, and studies of dynamic risk and protective factors in community samples in addition to clinical or forensic samples. Two risk factors previously deemed promising by Mann et al. (2010), hostility towards women and dysfunctional coping (conceptualized as hostile masculinity and emotional regulation deficits, respectively, in this review), could now be considered supported using this review's criteria of three or more studies demonstrating an effect size of 0.15 or greater. No new risk factors were identified. We conducted a broader search of protective factors in recognition of the relative newness of this literature: Positive social support was the only protective factor identified as empirically supported. We also discuss situational risk and protective factors.