Robert A Prentky

Fairleigh Dickinson University · Department of Psychology

Developing an empirically derived classification system that accounts for the heterogeneity of youth could benefit the court, probation officers, and clinicians in making informed management and treatment decisions. This study used a latent class analysis to examine histories and treatment needs patterns among 561 youths who engaged in problematic...

Juveniles with sex offenses (JSOs) are statutorily unique in terms of mandated management provisions. Managerial decisions are informed by risk assessment instruments that often do not take into account the challenges associated with a prediction for JSOs, because of the dynamic nature of adolescent development, the heterogeneity of JSOs, and the l...

Adolescent behavior now occurs offline and online. Frequently studied and treated independently, the relationship between offline problem behaviors and online risk taking is not well understood. This study asked whether there are any problematic behaviors predictive of online risk taking by high school students. Using a 2009 dataset of 2,077 high s...

Research Questions: Rape prevention practice and policy have roots in data from 1985. This study uses 2015 national data to project recent prevalence, assesses whether rates now differ from those of 30 years ago, and disaggregates 2015 prevalence into rape of alcohol incapacitated victims, rapes combining both alcohol and physical tactics, and viol...

This article focuses on the characteristics of sexually violent men who have not been convicted of a crime. The objective of this study was to test the four key interrelated pillars of the Confluence Model. The first key pillar posits the interaction of Hostile Masculinity and Impersonal Sex as core risk predictors. The second pillar entails a “med...

This document represents the full Final Report for the project funded by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs [Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking; SMART Office] through grant # 2016-AW-BX-K004. The recommendations included in the report are entirely those of th...

A content analysis investigating the relationship between mass shootings covered in news stories and mental illness mentions.

Overview: *Limitations of risk assessment scales for youth with sex offenses (JSOs) *Common rehabilitation framework (RNR) *Scale development *Implementation *Results / scale revisions *Recommendations

This study aimed to assess fire-setting behaviors within a child welfare sample. The youth were divided into four groups based on their fire-setting behavior (e.g., no incidents, one incident, multiple minor incidents, and multiple severe incidents). Groups were compared based on five factors: overt antisocial behavior, covert antisocial behavior,...

With the post-Gault trend toward the criminalization of the juvenile court, the demand for risk prediction assessment scales took on newfound importance. The past several decades of research have underscored the limitations of these scales. To address these limitations, and to shift the focus from current and future risk to least restrictive manage...

Objective: To report on college student opinions about the scope of college sexual misconduct (CSM), suggested university sanctions, and treatment of students found responsible of CSM. Participants: In all, 23 US undergraduate students (14 females and 9 males) with a mean age of 20 years. Methods: Students participated either in female, male, or mi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to summarize the development of a treatment program for students found responsible of sexual misconduct. Design/methodology/approach This project, supported by the SMART (Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking) of the Department of Justice, was requested by The W...

The present study sought to determine whether the persistence of problematic sexualized behaviors (PSBs) committed by boys in the Massachusetts child welfare system would lend support to previous taxonomies categorizing offenders as early-onset/life course-persistent, adolescence-onset/adolescence-limited, or childhood-limited in their offending be...

This essay discusses the assessment of recidivism risk in sex offenders. It begins with definitions of critical terms and concepts. A number of approaches to risk assessment are described. Validated risk instruments are reviewed, with a focus on their reliability and accuracy in predicting recidivism. Actuarial assessment of risk is described as a...

The current retrospective archival study investigated the patterns of normative sexualized behavior (NSB), problematic sexualized behavior (PSB), and sexual perpetration for three age cohorts of boys and girls in a high-risk child welfare sample. All children in the present sample had exhibited some form of PSB in the past. We hypothesized that the...

This article provides an overview of sex offender legislation, cases, treatment, and research, including juvenile sex offenders and the new challenging area of Internet sex offenders. Laws pertaining to sex offenders have waxed and waned throughout the years. Legislation enacted in response to notable crimes and public response include: the Jacob W...

Convicted sex offenders released from custody at the end of their criminal sentences pose a risk for re-offense. In many US states, Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) laws have been enacted that allow for the post-prison preventive detention of high risk sex offenders. SVP laws require the courts to make dispositions that protect the public from harm...

The case I describe here presents two ethical dilemmas: (1) how to respond when confronted with a presumptively dangerous client (based solely on self-report) evaluated for an agency (limits on disclosure of confidential information in Section 4.05 of Privacy and Confidentiality in APA’s Code of Conduct) and (2) how to present the case in present c...

The current archival study assesses risk factors associated with recommitment of 142 individuals adjudicated Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) from civil settings to a forensic hospital in New York State. Within 10 years of transfer from a forensic hospital, 40 (28.2%) were recommitted. Using survival analyses to account for the wide range in...

This study examined the relationship between childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse and placement instability, and sexually inappropriate and aggressive behaviors in a child welfare sample. Sexually Inappropriate Behavior was associated with all independent variables. Sexual Aggression and Child/Male Victims were both associated with Sexual Abuse a...

IntroductionReview of Risk PredictorsMethod TerminologyParticipantsProcedure for Data CollectionThe J-Soap-II ScaleDiscussionConclusion

The recent Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Comstock (2010) upheld the constitutionality of The Adam Walsh Act, which provides for civil commitment of child pornography (CP) offenders certified as sexually dangerous, thereby approving litigation of all such prisoners in the federal system. The two studies reported here sought to address the question...

This commentary addresses the controversy surrounding the proposed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Revision (DSM-5) diagnosis of pedohebephilia. We examine adult male sexual attraction to young pubescent females and whether such attraction is deviant and constitutes a mental disorder, and, independent of that question,...

Sexual violence is an insidious and pervasive problem that insinuates itself into all aspects of contemporary society. It can neither be mitigated nor adequately controlled through current socio-legal practices. A more promising approach must embrace four integrated elements: (1) public policy, (2) primary prevention, (3) statutory management, and...

Statutory management of juvenile sexual offenders demands reliable, valid methods for assessing the risk posed by these youth. This study examined the predictive validity of the J-SOAP-II using samples of adolescent and pre-adolescent boys who were wards of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. The base rate for sexual recidivism among t...

A small but growing niche of clinical practice involves services provided to sexual offenders, typically within the criminal justice system. This is an emotionally, and ethically, challenging area of practice that has, for all practical purposes, been unregulated, with the sole exception of the efforts of one professional organization (Association...

Sexually reactive children and adolescents (SRCAs), sometimes referred to as juvenile sexual offenders, may be more vulnerable and likely to experience damaging effects from pornography use because they are a high-risk group for a variety of aggressive behaviors. The purpose of this study is to describe the characteristics of those who use pornogra...

To describe the characteristics of girls in foster care who have exhibited sexually abusive behavior. This was a chart review and a descriptive, exploratory study of 155 female children and adolescents (age 4-17 years) who were in foster care and had been evaluated for their sexual abusive and aggressive behaviors. Findings indicated that these gir...

The year 2009 approaches the twentieth anniversary of the birth of sexual predator legislation, a family of laws aimed at controlling sexual violence through "regulatory" schemes of prevention - schemes that claim exemption from the constraints surrounding the normal "charge and conviction" paradigm of the criminal justice system. This same two-dec...

In this brief commentary, we address several of the points raised by Drs. First and Halon on the abuses of DSM diagnoses (APA, 2000) in civil commitment hearings of sex offenders. We discuss each of the elements in the three-step process proposed by First and Halon for reforming the diagnosis of paraphilias in SVP proceedings, paying particular att...

A cohort of 136 rapists and 115 child molesters civilly committed to a prison in Massachusetts and followed for 25 years (see Prentky, Lee, Knight, & Cerce, 1997) was examined for the effect of age at time of release on sexual recidivism. The present study (1) examined the recidivism rates for each of five age-at-release groups, separately for rapi...

Adjudication of sexually violent predator commitment laws places demands on science. In the current article, the authors discuss the determination of mental abnormality and its reliance on medical nosological systems. Second, the authors examine the determination of current risk by reviewing three common concerns: (a) mechanistic estimations of ris...

In order to understand the precursors to sexual offending among youth and the associated gender differences, the records of 813 sexually abusive children (659 boys and 154 girls) referred for an evaluation of their sexually inappropriate and coercive behavior were reviewed and coded. These children ranged in age from 3 to 18 when they committed the...

This study examined the predictive value of the triad (enuresis, firesetting, cruelty to animals) in a group of incarcerated sex offenders. The most salient positive finding in this investigation was the association between one or more components of the triad and a highly abusive home environment. There was no compelling evidence to support the pro...

The decade of the nineties ushered in an unprecedented number of state and federal laws intended to manage sexual offenders. Among the most controversial are the so-called sexually violent person (hereinafter SVP) laws - schemes that use civil commitment to supplement criminal sentences in order to incapacitate the most dangerous sex offenders. Ris...

The Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP) was first developed in 1994 in response to the need for a structured method of assessing risk of recidivism among juvenile sexual offenders (R. A. Prentky, B. Harris, K. Frizzell, & S. Righthand, 2000). Over the ensuing years the scale has been subjected to a series of studies that have sought...

This paper surveys the clinical and legal literature in the area of sexual offender law, policy, and research from 1987 through 2001. Eleven clinical journals, yielding approximately 12,858 articles were screened, as well as 1196 articles in law journals. Content trends over fifteen years are reported. In addition, five major areas within the sexua...

Our original paper reporting on the application of a cost-benefit model to rehabilitation of child molesters appeared in this Journal in 1990 (see record 1990-29331-001). Since that time, there has been considerable, high-profile attention given to the problem of sexual violence, producing considerable federal legislation. For many states, the new...

In earlier writings, I addressed presumptive similarities between creative cognition and deviant cognition that reflect a predisposition to psychosis (e.g., Prentky, 1980, 1989). I proposed that certain biologically conceived cognitive styles that are peculiar to extraordinary creativity possess common biological ancestry with certain cognitive sty...

1. A new subgroup of rape victims resides in nursing homes. 2. Nursing home victims can suffer both compounded and silent rape trauma. 3. Innovative therapies are needed for treating elder rape trauma.

Assessments of juvenile sexual offenders that are intended to aid in dispositional decisions occur at a multitude of decision points within the juvenile justice system. Despite the ubiquity of decisions that include considerations of risk, relatively little empirical work has been done on the development and validation of a risk assessment procedur...

Reppucci and Haugaard (1989) reviewed the progress to prevent sexual abuse of children. Programmatic efforts have focused on (1) schoolchildren, (2) the parents and other care-givers, and (3) day-care centers. School programs have two principal goals, primary prevention and detection (disclosure of past and ongoing sexual abuse). Plummer (1984) obs...

The two most commonly employed models for predicting generic dangerousness evolved out of federal court orders. The psychiatric model emerged from a 1974 court-ordered reevaluation of all residents in Ohio’s maximum-security prison for the criminally insane. The sociopsychological model emerged from a 1976 court-ordered reevaluation of all inmates...

In this chapter, we focus specifically on the types of evidence, or data, collected by clinical forensic examiners (as opposed to medical examiners and police investigators) and problems associated with the admissibility of such data in legal proceedings. Many examiners routinely employ a variety of different paper-and-pencil tests, scales, and que...

In this chapter we attempt to survey the copious clinical and empirical literature on classification of sexual offenders. Because of the enormity of the task, we have divided the chapter into four major sections. In the first section, we look at the various ways in which a valid system for classifying sexual offenders can assist in our clinical and...

It may fairly be concluded at this point that virtually all discretionary decisions about sexual offenders are firmly, perhaps hopelessly, embedded in a quagmire of social and political logomachy. Indeed, the heat of political and social debate far exceeds the light that is cast on the problem of sexual violence. The age-old struggle, dating back t...

Perhaps one the murkiest and most contentious questions concerns the frequency of sexual violence. More than any other type of criminal conduct, sexual offenses, in their extraordinary diversity, are likely to fade into the unfathomable abyss of human experience, never to be known by the criminal justice system. The innumerable problems that plague...

This chapter includes a number of general areas that occasionally come up in forensic evaluations, such as pornography (or more specifically trafficking over the Internet) or the complex role of sexual fantasy in assessing risk. Although the mission of this book clearly is not etiologic, we chose to begin this chapter with a brief discussion of the...

Over the past several decades our awareness of the magnitude and the impact of sexual victimization has increased considerably. Sexual abuse has become an acute problem, manifested in ever-increasing costs to society as well as to its victims. The costs incurred by society include medical and psychological services to aid victim recovery, the appre...

In science, as in all of life, it is well known that a chain of events can reach a crisis point in which very small changes become magnified. In the world of science, this phenomenon is occasionally referred to as the butterfly effect, the notion that a tiny, insignificant insect fluttering its wings in the air over London can affect storm systems...

Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Incidence and Prevalence. 2. Victim Impact. 3. Diagnosis and Classification. 4. Assessment. 5. Prediction. 6. Legal Responses to Sexual Violence. 7. Forensic Evidence. 8. Remediation. 9. Special Topics. Appendix: Risk Assessment Instruments. References. Index.

Over the past several decades, our awareness of the magnitude and the impact of sexual victimization has increased considerably. Sexual abuse has become an acute problem, manifested in ever increasing costs to society as well as to its victims. The costs incurred by society include medical and psychological services to aid victim recovery, the appr...

We describe a study of DSM-III-R Axis I diagnoses of lifetime comorbid nonsexual disorders in 60 males with paraphilias (PAs; N = 42) and nonparaphilic forms of sexual impulsivity-designated paraphilia-related disorders (PRD; N = 18). Subjects completed a semistructured intake questionnaire and sexual inventories, the Inventory to Diagnose Depressi...

The Joseph J. Peters Institute (JJPI) is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, licensed, outpatient psychiatric clinic that provides clinical services to victims of sexual abuse and to perpetrators of sexual abuse. The program at JJPI was started in 1955 by Dr. Joseph J. Peters, a psychiatrist at Philadelphia General Hospital. Dr. Peters initially began...

We address the high variability in sex offender recidivism rates by examining several of the critical methodological differences that underlie this variability. We used a dataset on 251 sex offenders (136 rapists and 115 child molesters) who were discharged over a 25-year period to examine changes in recidivism as a function of changes in dispositi...

The present review surveys the use of antiandrogen treatment to reduce sexual drive in men at risk for sexual offending. After briefly reviewing castration, the author traces the history of the use of medications to reduce sexual drive, focusing on the antiandrogens. Controversy surrounding their use and recent alternatives are mentioned, with an e...

This study examined the predictive efficacy of 10 rationally derived, archivally coded variables for assessing reoffense risk among extrafamilial child molesters. Follow-up data on 111 child molesters who were discharged from the Massachusetts Treatment Center between 1960 and 1984 were used. Degree of sexual preoccupation with children, paraphilia...

This study examined the predictive efficacy of 10 rationally derived, archivally coded variables for assessing reoffense risk among extrafamilial child molesters. Follow-up data on 111 child molesters who were discharged from the Massachusetts Treatment Center between 1960 and 1984 were used. Degree oi sexual preoccupation with children, paraphilia...

Discusses issues in laws regarding community notification of the presence of sex offenders released following incarceration. Three major problems that must be addressed are described. A number of recommendations are made that will serve to better protect the community from potentially dangerous sex offenders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA,...

attempt to provide the rudiments of the theoretical underpinning for sex offender treatment / focus on the rationale for sex offender treatment / the rationale for the modification of any unwanted behaviour stems from the informed consideration of those factors that are most importantly associated with the emergence and the sustenance of the behavi...

This study examined the utility of lifestyle impulsivity as a typological discriminator for recidivism among rapists. Impulsivity was examined with respect to four criminal offense domains on a sample of 109 offenders discharged from a maximum-security treatment facility over a period of 25 years. In all instances, the hazard rate for the high-impu...

We describe a comorbidity study of DSM-III-R-defined Axis I diagnoses comparing male outpatient paraphiliacs to men with nonparaphilic forms of sexual impulsivity designated as paraphilia-related disorders. Data were prospectively collected from 60 consecutively evaluated outpatient males, aged 21-53 years, seeking treatment for the principal disor...

The impetus for developing an inventory that assesses sexual and aggressive thoughts, fantasies, and behaviors evolved from programmatic work on the classification of sexual offenders. To classify rapists in the Massachusetts Treatment Center Rapist Typology, Version 3, detailed information on several dimensions is required, including social compet...

Murder is the unlawful taking of human life. It is a behavioral act that terminates life in the context of power, personal gain, brutality, and sometimes sexuality. Murder is a subcategory of homicide, which also includes lawful taking of human life (e.g., manslaughter, deaths resulting from criminal and noncriminal negligence, and unpremeditated v...

The basis of sexual psychopathy legislation in the USA is that some offenders need to be dealt with differently from others because of their 'sexual dangerousness'. These offenders are sent to hospitals or prisons where they are meant to receive treatment while they are detained over an indefinite period. Although these statutes have been in existe...

assess the need for [identifying more homogeneous taxonomic subgroups] for juvenile [sex] offenders / examine what dimensions and taxonomic structures might serve as reasonable points of departure in the systematic exploration for viable typologies for young offenders examine [in an empirical study] the utility of two reliable, reasonably valid t...

A definition of nonparaphilic sexual addiction (NPSA) is offered and the literature suggesting comorbidity between NPSA and paraphilias (PAs) is reviewed. We describe a study to clarify the relationship between NPSA and PA. Thirty consecutive male respondents to an advertisement (PA: N = 15; NPSA: N = 15) were evaluated. The frequency of sexual beh...

Paraphilias (PAs) and non-paraphilic sexual addictions (NPSAs) may be behaviors that share a common perturbation of central serotonin neuroregulation as a component of their pathophysiology. Fluoxetine was selected as an agent that might mitigate these behaviors, based on the observations that PAs and NPSAs are associated with depression, compulsio...

Considerable evidence has amassed in studies of both nonoffender and offender samples that demonstrates both that sexual aggression is determined by a multiplicity of variables and that convicted sexual offenders are markedly heterogeneous (Knight, Rosenberg, & Schneider, 1985; Malamuth, 1986). Attempts both to identify sexually coercive men in nor...

Considerable evidence has amassed in studies of both nonoffender and offender samples that demonstrates both that sexual aggression is determined by a multiplicity of variables and that convicted sexual offenders are markedly heterogeneous (Knight, Rosenberg, & Schneider, 1985; Malamuth, 1986). Attempts both to identify sexually coercive men in nor...

This study examined the differences between 97 abducting and 60 nonabducting child molesters on selected typological and antisocial/criminal variables. Although the results supported one a priori hypothesis, they disconfirmed two others and yielded an unpredicted but theoretically interesting abductor covariate. Our hypothesis that child abductors...

Examined the cost effectiveness of the rehabilitation of child molesters by designing and testing a cost-benefit model. The model uses program and repeat offense data from a treatment center for offenders and costs derived from averaged figures obtained from state agencies. 129 released child molesters were used for estimating repeat offense rates...

one of the major goals of our research program at the Massachusetts Treatment Center during the 1980s has been addressing these critical taxonomic problems by systematically applying this approach to the study of sexual offenders / it is the intent of this chapter to give an overview of this programmatic approach and to summarize some of the taxono...

Classification is a fundamental cognitive operation. From the first perceptual contact with stimuli (Pomerantz, 1986; Treisman, 1986) through the ultimate integration and storage of information in long-term memory (Rosch & Lloyd, 1978), the identification, organization, and integration of elements that share common characteristics has been shown to...