ABSTRACT
Sex offenders are most commonly differentiated based on the age of the typical victim: adult sex offenders are those individuals who largely sexually offend against adults, and child sex offenders are those individuals who typically offend against children. This chapter discusses the nature and extent of sexual offending and explains the important characteristics of both adult and child sex offenders. It describes the major theoretical approaches to understanding sexual offending, including: evolutionary approaches, social-structural and cultural approaches and social-cognitive approaches. A social-cognitive approach to understanding sexual offending focuses on how the way that individuals think about and process social information can influence their behaviour. The chapter addresses some of the main integrated models of sexual offending, including: Marshall and Barbaree's integrated theory, Finkelhor's precondition model, Hall and Hirschmann's quadripartite model, Malamuth's confluence model, Ward and Beech's integrated theory of sexual offending.
