Sex Crimes and Sex Offenders

Document Type:Coursework

Subject Area:Criminology

Document 1

Belief: This is a social bond that relates to an individual’s commitment, involvement and attachment to society and other people. Callousness: This is the insensitive emotional reaction or response to other people that may be caused by child abuse. Castration Anxiety: It is the fear experienced by boys between the ages of 3-5 years of damaging of losing their penis. Classical Conditioning: Also known as the Pavlov’s observation, it is a learning process that ascertains when a neutral stimulus is linked to a potent stimulus, a known and predictable response is determined with only a neutral stimulus. Cognitive Bias: Illogical reasoning, evaluation or mistakes in cognitive processes that affect a person’s perception of the world. It is the unconscious part of person that seeks pleasure.

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Impulsivity: A personality trait characterized by the tendency to act with nor forethought of the consequences. Involvement: amount of time or energy spent in a particular activity. It is one of the four social bonds by Hirschi (1969). Lack of Empathy: A personality trait characterized with the inability to understand another person’s emotions or respond appropriately with emotions. Self-Regulation Model of Sexual Offending: A theory proposed by Hudson and Ward that explains behavioral concepts that influence sexual offending. They argued that people are goal oriented and so their behavior is focused towards the achievement of their goals. There are four pathways that can lead to sexual offending. Superego: Part of an individual’s mind that reflects on morality and acts as a self-critical conscience.

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Vicarious Learning: A learning process whereby people learn from other people’s experiences. Social Learning theory focus on crime in general. The theory explains that crime is learnt through imitation. The learning process may be vicarious or experiential; but still, crimes committed are learned through observation from other people around us. Discuss several single-factor sex-crime/sex-offender specific theories: Biological: Scientists exploit biological process to understand the link to behaviors like sex crime. Research reveals that over 33% of sex offenders and below 17% of non-offenders have brain abnormalities (Vandiver et al. Sigmund Freud concepts on sexual development are relied upon to explain why people have sexually deviant behaviors. Freud’s psychosexual development and other personality traits as proposed by other researchers are the factors that indirectly contribute to the development of sexually deviant behavior.

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Provide an overview of several multiple-factor sex-crime/sex-offender theories: Precondition theory: It was developed in 1984 by Finkelhor and it is focuses only on child sexual abuse. Finkelhor proposes four preconditions, namely: The offender must be sexually motivated to abuse children; The offender must overcome internal hindrances against child sexual abuse; The offender external obstacles; and the offender must overcome resistance by the child (Vandiver et al. Quadripartite theory: Hall and Hirschman developed this theory to focus on the sexual aggression inflicted on women. This would therefore imply that the causes of sex crimes are the same as those of all other crimes. According to Gottfredson and Hirschi, people who commit crime are more physical than mental, self-centred, impulsive and always looking for gratification.

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