Abstract: Understanding Women's Sexual Offending: A Comparative Analysis of Women and Men in a State-Wide Incarcerated Sample (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 14, 2018: 11:52 AM

Liberty BR Salon K (ML 4) (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Erin Comartin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

Amanda Burgess-Proctor, PhD, Associate Professor, Oakland University, Rochester, MI

Sheryl Kubiak, PhD, Professor, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Kimberly Bender, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI

Poco Kernsmith, PhD, Professor, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

Background and Purpose: Research on women’s sex crime perpetration is scarce relative to research on men (Gannon & Cortoni, 2010), so it is unclear whether women and men who sexually offend share the same social or criminal histories. This analysis aims to identify characteristics that distinguish between women’s and men’s sexual offending to better inform prevention and treatment interventions.

Methods: We compare women and men incarcerated for a sex offense in one US state using a two-study design. In Study 1, we examine Department of Corrections administrative data for the entire incarcerated population. In Study 2, we examine self-report survey data collected from a subsample of the population. Differences in demographic, criminal history and offense characteristics, childhood adversity, violence experienced in adulthood, behavioral health, and sexual deviance were tested using chi-square and independent samples t-tests. In addition, three logistic regression models (one for the total subsample, one for women, and one for men) were used to assess factors predictive of a sex crime against a child under 16 years old.

Results: Per Study 1, women account for 1.1% (n=98) of individuals incarcerated for a sex offense (N=9,235). Women were more likely to be white (χ²(2)=11.146, p<.01), younger (t(102.107)=-2.005, p<.05), have a lower rate of drug abuse (χ²(4)=14.098, p<.01), and were less likely to have a prior non-sex offense sentence (χ²(1)=17.010, p<.001). Per Study 2, women and men in the subsample (n=129) did not significantly differ demographically from their counterparts in Study #1. Women in Study 2 were less likely to have a delinquent childhood (t(127)=-4.157, p<.001) and a prior prison stay (χ²(1)=11.522, p<.01); were more likely to have a victim under the age of 16 (χ²(1)=8.954, p<.01), to be the parent of the victim (χ²(3)=10.428, p<.05), and to have a co-offender (χ²(1)=18.375, p<.001). Women were more likely to have experienced intimate partner abuse (t(69.959)=7.121, p<.001) and less likely to be sexually deviant (t(127)=-3.987, p<.001). The full logistic regression model predicting a child victim was significant (χ²(8, n=99)=25.102, p<.01) and found that being a victim of child sexual abuse (Wald=7.310, p<.01) and having a higher score of non-intimate partner perpetration (Wald=4.000, p<.05) were predictive of having a victim under 16 years old. The model for women showed that those who experienced child sexual abuse were more likely to have a child victim. For every one-point increase in perpetration of violence against a non-intimate partner, men were less likely to have a child victim.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings suggest that women who are convicted and sentenced for a sex offense differ from their male counterparts on a significant number of factors. Most pressing is the finding that women who experienced child sexual abuse are 10.3 times more likely to have a child victim, while men who score higher on non-intimate partner perpetration in adulthood are less likely to have a child victim. Therefore, sex offender treatment interventions developed for men are poorly suited to and may have limited efficacy for women.