I'm Karl Hanson. I'm a senior research officer with Public Safety Canada. I was invited here today as a content expert. I've been doing research on sex offenders for a number of years and some of my work has been mentioned in previous testimony. What I will do today is basically introduce some summaries of some basic facts about sex offenders and open myself up for questions on the topics on which I have conducted research in our department, as stated positions.
In front of you are four separate pieces of paper. One of the pieces of paper is called “Sex Offender Recidivism”. It's a basic summary of recidivism rates of sex offenders. We took a large group of sex offenders, followed them for a period of time, and looked at how many of them were caught for a new sex offence. What we find, on large studies, is that about 10% to 15% will be convicted of a new sex offence after about a five-year follow-up period of time. This is lower than many people anticipate, but it's not zero. Also, there is wide variability in the recidivism rates, with observed rates being as low as 1% or 2% in certain subgroups and being as high as 50% or 60% in other subgroups.
The second piece of paper, the research summary, is “Recidivism rates of female sex offenders”. This is one of the subgroups of sex offenders who have very low recidivism rates. Their sexual recidivism rates are in the order of 1% or 2%, if you follow them for a period of time. We have updated this with larger samples with similar results.
The third piece of paper is something called “What Works For Sexual Offenders?” I'll pause here, since it says something a little bit more complicated. What we did was we looked at all the treatment programs out there that have been evaluated for sex offenders and compared the ones that were more likely to be effective and those that were less likely to be effective.
We found that, overall, for the offenders who received treatment, their recidivism rates were about 11% after a five- or six-year follow-up, and for those who did not receive treatment, it was about 19%--it was higher. Both numbers are not zero, but there is a significant reduction overall.
We also found that we could identify the programs that are most likely to be effective. Those are the ones that treat moderate-risk to higher-risk offenders--offenders who have at least a moderate chance of reoffending--and those that treat the aspects or psychological characteristics associated with offending risk, their criminogenic needs. And the third principle is if they are able to engage the offenders meaningfully in the therapy process--what we refer to as responsivity. For programs that follow these principles, we have much stronger effects than those that do not. Basically, there are treatments out there that can be effective, many of which are implemented across Canada in various places.
The fourth piece of paper is one abstract translated in a French and English version. It summarizes a research study that I conducted with my colleagues Michael Seto and Kelly Babchishin, which looks at the extent to which offenders who have been caught for Internet sex crimes are also involved in contact sex offences. What we found is that among those who have been caught for an Internet sex crime, about 12% have an official conviction or record of a prior contact offence. About half of them will admit to a contact offence in the past.
If you look, then, at what happens to them after they're caught, you find that their recidivism rates are in the order of 3% to 5%. We observe a 4% to 5% recidivism rate after about three to five years, on average. About 2% are new contact offences, and about 3% are new Internet sex offences.
In summary, we believe there is a category of individuals who are involved with Internet sex offences who have a very low probability of becoming involved with contact sex offences. Some of the Internet sex offenders are just normal sex offenders who have Internet access, whereas there's another category, probably a smaller category, of individuals whose crimes are essentially restricted to Internet involvement.
Those are the major points I'd like to make today.