Sex offense remains a major problem in society that has damaging impacts. The criminal justice system is doing everything possible to apprehend all sex offenders to make society more secure. However, the scarcity of resources in the fight against this issue hinders its fight. The need to increase safety in society not only needs resources but also needs a better understanding of sexual offenders, their offense patterns, and associated risks. This information could be applied to develop a behavioral classification system that the criminal justice system can use to make informed decisions during investigations, sentencing, and criminal rehabilitation. This paper explores the behavioral and psychological traits of sex offenders.
Sexual offenders have some behavioral characteristics that often increase the probability of sexual offending. Typically, this involves a number of factors and circumstances. It is essential to understand that sex offenders make sexual offenses based on their choices regardless of the excuses they may give to justify their behavior. They often decide to act, although they understand that what they want to do is wrong. One behavioral factor is that most sex offenders are exhibit antisocial behavior (Mills, Kroner, & Anderson, 2004) . According to Hanson (2010), most sex offenders never care about others' welfare but rather take actions based on what they want. Most of them feel that it is acceptable to take advantage of individuals, even though they are breaking the law. In terms of their normal life, most of them rarely interact with others, except in cases where they need to camouflage. Sex offenders often use interactions with others to implement their plans to commit a sexual offense.
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According to Ha & Beauregard (2016), most sex offenders also lack external controls. In most cases, sex offenders create situations that allow them to commit sexual offenses. In most cases, these are isolated situations where the chances of being caught are fairly low or impossible. In cases of children abuse, the offenders often isolate themselves in situations where they are alone with the children and have the upper hand over them. Rapists, for example, lure their victims from their friends or family and get them into isolated areas. Isolation often provides offenders with an opportunity to commit the offense with less disturbance and reduces the risk of being caught significantly. Additionally, sexual offenders are always motivated to commit sexual offenses. Often, the offenders have an abnormal sexual interest in their targets. They are often sexually attracted to their targets, and it never bothers them regardless of the age or gender of their victim. This sexual motivation acts as a drive that makes them commit sexual offenses.
Most sex offenders are warm and often fills the need. Before committing any sexual offense, sexual offenders find a victim whom they can easily lure by first identifying a vulnerability. Vulnerabilities could be in terms of low self-esteem, lack of parental attention, or isolation. After identifying the vulnerability, sexual offenders always try to obtain their victims' attention by making them believe that sexual offenders are concerned with them. Showing concern prompts the victims to gain trust with the offenders. After developing trust with their victims, the predators, often fill the need, such as being emotionally available for their target, which often results in isolation of the victims.
In addition, there is further evidence that some sex offenders are substance abusers. Abuse of substances like cocaine, alcohol, or bhang increases the risk of offending. According to Kraanen & Emmelkamp (2011), about 50 percent of sexual predators are or have a past of abusing drugs, where about 25 percent of the sex offenders being alcohol abusers. Additionally, about 25 percent of sex predators are intoxicated when committing sexual offenses. Substance abuse may also have an indirect contribution to sex offense where individuals subjected to violence by their substance-abusing parents become sexual offenders themselves due to traumatic events. Due to the high prevalence of sex offenses because of substance abuse, the advisable to screen and treat substance abuse to reduce the number of sexual offenses.
In addition to behavioral factors, sex offenders have unique psychological characteristics that propel them into sexual offenses. The psychological aspect of a sexual offense is very complicated, and there are no universally accepted psychological characteristics that predict the behavior of sexual predators. The most common psychological characteristic of male, female, or juvenile sexual offenders is that most of them have histories of psychotic episodes or other forms of mental disorders. According to Booth & Gulati (2014), most sex offenders have experienced mental disorders like paraphilia. According to Lewis (2020), conditions like paraphilia cause individuals to have sexually arousing urges that are often recurrent and intense, resulting in considerable distress. Other mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and trauma, increase the chances of sexual offenses. According to Bartol & Bartol (2017), these mental disorders cause individuals to become violent, resulting in sex offenses.
The psychological traits of young sex predators include inadequate parental monitoring. Parental monitoring refers to parents' interests in knowing the whereabouts of their children or activities they are engaging in with their friends. Parents should ensure that they know where their children are; according to Bartol & Bartol (2017), most cases of sexual offenses and homicide involved children whose parents cared less about their whereabouts and the activities they performed. Additionally, failure to take care of children and abusing them physically and mentally increases the chances of violence and sexual offense. When parents neglect children, they may engage in activities like substance abuse, which, as discussed earlier, plays a significant part in promoting sexual violence. In addition, juveniles who commit sexual offenses experience education difficulties compared to non-juveniles. According to Bartol & Bartol (2017), these children often engage in antisocial behavior that could result in sexual violence. This assumption is made on adolescents and pre-adolescents.
In males, females, and juveniles, sexual abuse history increases the chances of sexual violence. If a child is abused sexually, there is a high probability that they may later engage in sexual offenses. There is a high probability of individuals sexually abused in the past to become sexual predators (Jespersen et al., 2009). This study found that the existence of sexual violence history in adult predators among offenders against adults was considerably low compared to juveniles. This research indicates a high probability of people with a sex abuse history becoming sexual predators.
Conclusively, the sexual offense has become a major problem in society today. The worrying issue about sexual violence is that everyone is vulnerable to sexual offenders. Despite the efforts by the criminal justice system to reduce sex offenses, the issue is still rampant and requires every stakeholder in the society to take action to expose sexual predators. The criminal justice system has heavily invested in identifying the tendencies and characteristics of sexual offenders to reduce the issue. Some behaviors manifested by sexual offenders include antisocial behaviors, where the offenders find it difficult to interact with people unless they want to lure their target. Other behaviors include a lack of external controls, where individuals cannot fend off the urge for sexual violence and substance abuse, which makes up to 50% of the sex offenders. In addition to the physical behaviors, some psychological characteristics, such as mental disorders, increases the chances of a sexual offense. The government and society should increase the efforts to fight sexual offenses to make society more secure.
References
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Booth, B. D., & Gulati, S. (2014). Mental illness and sexual offending. Psychiatr Clin North Am. (37), 183-194.
Ha, O. K., & Beauregard, E. (2016). Sex offending and low self-control: An extension and test of the general theory of crime. Journal of Criminal Justice, 47 , 62-73.
Hanson, R. K. (2010). Empathy deficits of sexual offenders: A conceptual model. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 9 (1), 13-23.
Jespersen, A. F., Lalumiere, M. L., & Seto, M. C. (2009). Sexual abuse history among adult sex offenders and non-sex offenders: A meta-analysis. Child Abuse & Neglect, 33 (3), 179-192.
Kraanen, F. L., & Emmelkamp, P. M. (2011). Substance misuse and substance use disorders in sex offenders: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, 31 (3), 478-489.
Lewis, S. J. (2020, May 11). Do Sex Offenders Have A Mental Illness? Psychology Today .
Mills, J. F., Kroner, D. G., & Anderson, D. (2004). The antisocial attitudes and associates of sex offenders. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 14 (2), 134-145.
