ABSTRACT
There is increasing public and professional concern about Internet-related sexual offending, including the use of Internet technologies to access and distribute child pornography. This concern parallels an increase in the number of child pornography cases faced by police, other criminal justice professionals, and clinicians. The key concern for many is the likelihood that someone who accesses or collects child pornography will go on to directly sexually assault a child (also referred to as ‘offline’ offending). This concern is paramount for professionals who are tasked with a variety of duties including investigating these offences, providing assessments of risk for bail and sentencing, correctional intake assessments and treatment planning, and creating supervision plans for offenders on a variety of forms of conditional release (e.g. bail, probation, parole). The current chapter addresses the risk to commit a future sexual offence, focusing on risk factors that could be used within law enforcement as well as other criminal justice settings. We provide an overview of risk assessment relating to sexual offenders more generally as well as the literature specifically focused on risk for contact offending among Internet sexual offenders, especially child pornography offenders. There is evidence to suggest that criminal history variables predict contact and child pornography recidivism. In addition, we examine how other variables such as characteristics relating to offender collections (e.g. gender of the children in the images) and other sexual interests may relate to the risk of future offending for both dual offenders (online as well as offline sex offenders) and online-only sex offenders. We will discuss the limitations of the current research and suggest future directions. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.
