Profiling terrorists or drug runners may not be politically correct, but evidently profiling sex offenders is. Here's an interesting article by Daniel Engber which explains how it's done:
On Wednesday, convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan was charged with kidnapping two small children and murdering their older brother, their mother, and her boyfriend. When he was an inmate in 1999 and 2000, forensic psychologists evaluated Duncan using two different tests; both indicated he was likely to carry out a crime after being released from prison. How do psychologists assess the risk that a sex offender will strike again?
Through a combination of clinical judgment and statistics. A forensic psychologist interviews the convict, speaks with his family, and reviews police reports and prison records. The psychologist combines this research with actuarial assessments designed to predict whether an offender will commit another crime.
These actuarial tools have become common only in the past 10 years; today, most forensic psychologists recognize their value in predicting recidivism. Researchers design the assessments by examining sex offender databases. They look for the variables that best correlate with repeated criminal activity, then whittle these down to the most important factors.
The simplest tool for evaluating sex offenders is the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offense Recidivism. The RRASOR (pronounced "razor") includes just four items. A sex offender gets one point for being under the age of 25 at the time of his release from prison, another if any of his victims were male, and a third if he wasn't related to his victims. He gets up to three more points depending on how many sex crimes he's been charged with.
The most dangerous offenders, then, are young adults who have committed multiple sex crimes against boys they've never met before. According to the RRASOR's table of probabilities, these six-point cases have more than a 73 percent chance of committing another crime within 10 years. (Psychologists did use the RRASOR to assess Duncan, and found he was likely to strike again. He'd have received at least two points: His earlier victim was male and a stranger.)
Viewpoint offers this suggestion: Two to three points should be sufficient warrant to place the villain in jail until age 65; Four to five points should land him in prison for life, and six or more points should win him an appointment with his Maker.
