"Poissoning" the Pot: The Dark Figure of Grossly Overestimating Sex Crime Recidivism with Nicholas Scurich and Richard S. John

Today we have a grossly biased "research paper by two complete buffoons with Ph. Ds, which in this instance stands for Piled High and Deep.

Just who are these two twits, you ask? The offensive paper, "The Dark Figure of Sexual Recidivism", was written by Nicholas Scurich and Richard S. John

Richard S. John is associate professor of psychology and a research associate at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on normative and descriptive models of human judgment and decision making and methodological issues in application of decision and probabilistic risk analysis (PRA). He has consulted on a number of large projects involving expert elicitation, including analysis of nuclear power plant risks (NUREG 1150) and analysis of cost and schedule risk for tritium supply alternatives.

Nicholas Scurich, PhD, is "a tenured professor of Psychology and Criminology at the University of California, Irvine. In 2017 he joined TAG ("Threat Assessment Group") as a consultant and lecturer in workplace misconduct mitigation. Dr. Scurich's focus on misconduct risk assessment has included scientific studies of how to assess the risk of misconduct, how to deter dangerous behavior, how to make scientifically informed decisions about risky individuals, and how to communicate risk information. He frequently consults for the Department of Homeland Security on issues related to risk assessment and security. For example, he has worked with the TSA to help develop novel approaches to allocating security resources and screening of airline passengers based on risk."

IF YOU JUST WANT THE SHORT STORY-- Scurich works for a business that pimps threat assessment tests to other big business, and John works for a hokey anti-terrorism program for USC. Both work with the second dumbest and most useless creation of the Bush Administration (the AWA being first), the Department of Homeland Security.

Tweedle Scurich and Tweedle John wrote a crappy research paper, published it on SSRN, then wrote a press release in hopes of getting some cheap publicity.

I suggest you check out the Sentencing Typepad blog to read more, and to a link to the offensive report:

https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2019/02/the-dark-figure-of-sexual-recidivism.html

"The Dark Figure of Sexual Recidivism"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Nicholas Scurich and Richard John now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

Empirical studies of sexual offender recidivism have proliferated in recent decades. Virtually all of the studies define recidivism as a new legal charge or conviction for a sexual crime, and these studies tend to find recidivism rates on the order of 5-15% after 5 years and 10-25% after 10+ years.  It is uncontroversial that such a definition of recidivism underestimates the true rate of sexual recidivism because most sexual crime is not reported to legal authorities, the so-called “dark figure of crime.”

To estimate the magnitude of the dark figure of sexual recidivism, this paper uses a probabilistic simulation approach in conjunction with a.) victim self-report survey data about the rate of reporting sexual crime to legal authorities, b.) offender self-report data about the number of victims per offender, and c.) different assumptions about the chances of being convicted of a new sexual offense once it is reported.  Under any configuration of assumptions, the dark figure is substantial, and as a consequence, the disparity between recidivism defined as a new legal charge or conviction for a sex crime and recidivism defined as actually committing a new sexual crime is large.  These findings call into question the utility of recidivism studies that rely exclusively on official crime statistics to define sexual recidivism, and highlight the need for additional, long-term studies that use a variety of different measures to assess whether or not sexual recidivism has occurred.


My email sent to the duo that wrote this sorry excuse of a "research paper", obviously not expecting a response:

You report is a pile of bovine excrement. Your report has numerous fatal flaws:

1. You actually rely on the Prentky and Langevin studies, and you flagrantly ignore the fact both these studies were thoroughly debunked, and even Prentky himself says his study is not indicative of overall sex crime rates. The Langevin study purged non-recidivists from their study. Using two studies that utilized only high-risk previously recidivist offenders to come up with a recidivism rate for ALL SOs is stat manipulation.

2. Multinational studies don't take into account that the legal definitions of sex crimes vary greatly among nations. At the time of the writing of the Harris and Hanson study, the AoC for Canada was 14 but is 16-18 in the USA, so having agreed upon relations with a woman between 15-17 is illegal in the US depending on the state.

3. Whether you intend this or not, your article implies every sex crime must be the result of recidivists. At the least, you failed to mention anywhere in your report otherwise.

4. Ahlmeyer's reports relying on polygraphs is laughable. We all know that any reports relying on such pseudoscience is skewed. We all know polys don't work, and those studied by them were given ample incentives to "cooperate" with the study. That's why the Butner study was debunked, because they got BUSTED for that. It is a well known fact that polygraphs don't detect lies but polygraphers/ witch doctors use them to make assumptions, or worse yet, to scare people into making them say what the polygrapher wants to hear. A person who knows he's not getting out of lockup will certainly put on a show to get a favorable outcome such as a better living arrangement for complying with a program he knows is BS.

5. Abel's study is flawed, and it seems to me you don't understand the difference between paraphilic acts and pedophilic acts. Abel's study considered all manners of what was considered deviant acts, including homosexual acts between consenting parties. And, you are seeming assuming each act means one different victim every time. Even Abel concluded that most offenders who committed the same acts repeatedly had those same acts with the same one or two people. You obviously cherry-picked the highest, scariest sounding stat from that flawed study for a reason.

6. You fail to consider the fact that these studies of underreporting OVERESTIMATE something as being a crime. First, the NCVS allows for the checkmarking of incidents where a person merely "feels" or assumes that a sexual assault is imminent, even if nothing happened but this mere assumption. Actions once considered merely annoyances like looking too long at a woman or whistling at a woman's beauty can be considered sexual harassment in today's MeToo era, and many feminists consider that a form of "rape." Obviously due to no police investigation, there's NO WAY to know if a person reporting an incident is reporting an actual crime or just an annoying or an assumption. The 2004 Hanson and Harris study discussed the difficulty in addressing underreporting long before the explosion of sexual misconduct  claims in the latter half of the 2010s: “The Besserer and Trainor (2000) study showed that sexual assault had the highest percentage of incidents that were not reported to police (78%).  When respondents were asked why they did not report sexual victimization to the police, 59% of the respondents stated that the “incident was not important enough” to report.  Consequently, readers may wonder what counts as a sexual assault. The Besserer and Trainor (2000) victimization study used a very broad definition of sexual assault.  They counted all attempts at forced sexual activity, all unwanted sexual touching, grabbing, kissing, and fondling, as well as threats of sexual assault (Jennifer Tuffs, personal communication, January 15, 2003). Their broad definition undoubtedly included some behaviours that do not conform to the popular image of a sexual offence. All unwanted sexual advances are wrong, possibly criminal, and have the potential to do psychological harm to the victim.  As a society, however, we need to decide whether we wish to count an unwanted touch on the buttocks as an unreported sexual crime.  Coming to an agreement on what constitutes a sexual crime will be a difficult task.”

7. You don't seem to realize there's something called a false report. That's a pretty damned good explanation for the discrepancy between rearrest rates and reconviction rates and one that should be given greater consideration.

You cannot ASS-U-ME that the "majority" of recidivism goes unreported. It is arrogant to make that claim no matter what kind of stat manipulation you used.

You article is the shittiest excuse of research I've seen in a long time, and I'd love to know which victim advocate group funded this tripe.

ADDENDUM: A very thorough critique of this paper can be found at http://sosen.org/blog/2019/02/19/the-dark-figure-of-sex-offense-recidivism-overestimation-an-exercise-in-myth-busting.html