Publicação
Understanding sex offending through motivation-based typologies: A study with rapists, child molesters and child pornographers
| Resumo: | This research aims at creating a descriptive study of the characteristics of three groups of Portuguese sex offenders, as well as a motivational typology of these groups: rapists, child molesters, and child pornographers. Rapists are defined as individuals whose victims are 16 years old or older, and child molesters and child pornographers have had victimized individuals under that age. Typologies are useful when investigating deviant behavior, and they are important in each step of the criminal process. Even though knowledge on motivations of sex offenders is of high importance, there seems to be a lack of appreciation of this factor in the criminal process. Information on motivations to offend can be of great use when developing an offender profile. This can subsequently help professionals during their criminal investigation, for sentencing and crime prevention. Only by understanding offenders’ psychological motives for acting out it is possible to create a useful intervention plan. One part of the data used in this study belongs to a larger database, created by the senior author, and the remaining part of the data was gathered by the first author together with a co-researcher. All data was obtained by file consultation of the institutional records of the offenders. In total, a convenient sample of 164 Portuguese sex offenders was included in the study (73 rapists, 66 child molesters, and 25 child pornographers), with most of the data coming from prisons from the North of the country. A literature review was written in which all the relevant articles on rapists, child molesters and child pornographers were included, in order to identify the most relevant motivational categories discussed in previous studies. In a next stage, three grids were constructed (separately for each of the offender groups) including the most important motivational types found in the literature. By using the grids, all sex offender cases from the current study were read carefully and analyzed and coded/categorized by motivational types. It was found that the three groups of offenders of interest showed different socio-demographic characteristics, as well as legal-juridical traits. Studies should therefore keep such offender types separated when investigating or for intervention purposes. It was also found that rapists were mostly driven by power and control motivations, child molesters because of situational factors, and child pornographers were divided in non-contact offenders and contact-offenders, of which most non-contact offenders had sexual motivations or accessed child pornography out of curiosity, and contact-offenders were usually sexually motivated. The larger implications of these findings suggest that these motivations might be used in interventions, and that finally a clear picture of the Portuguese sex offender has been obtained. |
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| Autores principais: | Marcucci, Ambra |
| Assunto: | Ciências Sociais::Psicologia |
| Ano: | 2019 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso restrito |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | This research aims at creating a descriptive study of the characteristics of three groups of Portuguese sex offenders, as well as a motivational typology of these groups: rapists, child molesters, and child pornographers. Rapists are defined as individuals whose victims are 16 years old or older, and child molesters and child pornographers have had victimized individuals under that age. Typologies are useful when investigating deviant behavior, and they are important in each step of the criminal process. Even though knowledge on motivations of sex offenders is of high importance, there seems to be a lack of appreciation of this factor in the criminal process. Information on motivations to offend can be of great use when developing an offender profile. This can subsequently help professionals during their criminal investigation, for sentencing and crime prevention. Only by understanding offenders’ psychological motives for acting out it is possible to create a useful intervention plan. One part of the data used in this study belongs to a larger database, created by the senior author, and the remaining part of the data was gathered by the first author together with a co-researcher. All data was obtained by file consultation of the institutional records of the offenders. In total, a convenient sample of 164 Portuguese sex offenders was included in the study (73 rapists, 66 child molesters, and 25 child pornographers), with most of the data coming from prisons from the North of the country. A literature review was written in which all the relevant articles on rapists, child molesters and child pornographers were included, in order to identify the most relevant motivational categories discussed in previous studies. In a next stage, three grids were constructed (separately for each of the offender groups) including the most important motivational types found in the literature. By using the grids, all sex offender cases from the current study were read carefully and analyzed and coded/categorized by motivational types. It was found that the three groups of offenders of interest showed different socio-demographic characteristics, as well as legal-juridical traits. Studies should therefore keep such offender types separated when investigating or for intervention purposes. It was also found that rapists were mostly driven by power and control motivations, child molesters because of situational factors, and child pornographers were divided in non-contact offenders and contact-offenders, of which most non-contact offenders had sexual motivations or accessed child pornography out of curiosity, and contact-offenders were usually sexually motivated. The larger implications of these findings suggest that these motivations might be used in interventions, and that finally a clear picture of the Portuguese sex offender has been obtained. |
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