Sex Offenders and Self-Control: Explaining Sexual Violence (Criminal Justice)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1593320558 ISBN 13: 9781593320553

Publisher: Lfb Scholarly Pub Llc, 2004

Cleary studied non-sex offenders, in-treatment sex offenders, and never-treated sex offenders to determine whether their behavior reflected the General Theory of Crime. She explored the link between abusive parenting and criminal history and analogous behaviors and opportunity and routine activities in victim selection. Data showed moderate support for the self-control assertion that offenders do not specialize and high support for the generality of deviance. Although in-treatment sex offenders differed in self-control, mixed results were found for the relationship between low self-control and analogous and criminal behaviors among all three groups. Interviews supported the role of opportunity in victim selection; respondents used victims' physical proximity and/or emotional availability to gain access to them.

About the Author:

Shawna Cleary is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Substance Abuse Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, where she won the 2002 Provost's Ph.D. Dissertation Award.