Predator Panic: A Closer Look

Benjamin Radford

“Protect the children.” Over the years that mantra has been applied to countless real and perceived threats. America has scrambled to protect its children from a wide variety of dangers including school shooters, cyberbullying, violent video games, snipers, Satanic Ritual Abuse, pornography, the Internet, and drugs.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent protecting children from one threat or other, often with little concern for how expensive or effective the remedies are—or how serious the threat actually is in the first place. So it is with America’s latest panic: sexual predators.

According to lawmakers and near-daily news reports, sexual predators lurk everywhere: in parks, at schools, in the malls—even in children’s bedrooms, through the Internet. A few rare (but high-profile) incidents have spawned an unprecedented deluge of new laws enacted in response to the public’s fear. Every state has notification laws to alert communities about former sex offenders. Many states have banned sex offenders from living in certain areas, and are tracking them using satellite technology. Other states have gone even further; state emergency leaders in Florida and Texas, for example, are developing plans to route convicted sex offenders away from public emergency shelters during hurricanes. “We don’t want them in the same shelters as others,” said Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw. (How exactly thousands of desperate and homeless storm victims are to be identified, screened, and routed in an emergency is unclear.)

An Epidemic?

To many people, sex offenders pose a serious and growing threat—especially on the Internet. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made them a top priority this year, launching raids and arrest sweeps. According to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, “the danger to teens is high.” On the April 18, 2005, CBS Evening News broadcast, correspondent Jim Acosta reported that “when a child is missing, chances are good it was a convicted sex offender.” (Acosta is incorrect: If a child goes missing, a convicted sex offender is among the least likely explanations, far behind runaways, family abductions, and the child being lost or injured.) On his NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” Dateline reporter Chris Hansen claimed that “the scope of the problem is immense,” and “seems to be getting worse.” Hansen claimed that Web predators are “a national epidemic,” while Alberto Gonzales stated that there are 50,000 potential child predators online.

Sex offenders are clearly a real threat, and commit horrific crimes. Those who prey on children are dangerous, but how common are they? How great is the danger? After all, there are many dangers in the world—from lightning to Mad Cow Disease to school shootings—that are genuine but very remote. Let’s examine some widely repeated claims about the threat posed by sex offenders.

One in Five?

According to a May 3, 2006, ABC News report, “One in five children is now approached by online predators.” This alarming statistic is commonly cited in news stories about prevalence of Internet predators, but the factoid is simply wrong. The “one in five statistic” can be traced back to a 2001 Department of Justice study issued by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (“The Youth Internet Safety Survey”) that asked 1,501 American teens between 10 and 17 about their online experiences. Anyone bothering to actually read the report will find a very different picture. Among the study’s conclusions: “Almost one in five (19 percent) . . . received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year.” (A “sexual solicitation” is defined as a “request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult.” Using this definition, one teen asking another teen if her or she is a virgin—or got lucky with a recent date—could be considered “sexual solicitation.”) Not a single one of the reported solicitations led to any actual sexual contact or assault. Furthermore, almost half of the “sexual solicitations” came not from “predators” or adults but from other teens—in many cases the equivalent of teen flirting. When the study examined the type of Internet “solicitation” parents are most concerned about (e.g., someone who asked to meet the teen somewhere, called the teen on the telephone, or sent gifts), the number drops from “one in five” to just 3 percent.

This is a far cry from an epidemic of children being “approached by online predators.” As the study noted, “The problem highlighted in this survey is not just adult males trolling for sex. Much of the offending behavior comes from other youth [and] from females.” Furthermore, “Most young people seem to know what to do to deflect these sexual ‘come ons.’” The reality is far less grave than the ubiquitous “one in five” statistic suggests.

Recidivism Revisited

Much of the concern over sex offenders stems from the perception that if they have committed one sex offense, they are almost certain to commit more. This is the reason given for why sex offenders (instead of, say, murderers or armed robbers) should be monitored and separated from the public once released from prison. While it’s true that serial sex offenders (like serial killers) are by definition likely to strike again, the reality is that very few sex offenders commit further sex crimes.

The high recidivism rate among sex offenders is repeated so often that it is accepted as truth, but in fact recent studies show that the recidivism rates for sex offenses is not unusually high. According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study (“Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994”), just five percent of sex offenders followed for three years after their release from prison in 1994 were arrested for another sex crime. A study released in 2003 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that within three years, 3.3 percent of the released child molesters were arrested again for committing another sex crime against a child. Three to five percent is hardly a high repeat offender rate.

In the largest and most comprehensive study ever done of prison recidivism, the Justice Department found that sex offenders were in fact less likely to reoffend than other criminals. The 2003 study of nearly 10,000 men convicted of rape, sexual assault, and child molestation found that sex offenders had a re-arrest rate 25 percent lower than for all other criminals. Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison, and the ones who do are unlikely to re-offend. If released sex offenders are in fact no more likely to re-offend than murderers or armed robbers, there seems little justification for the public’s fear and the monitoring laws targeting them. (Studies also suggest that sex offenders living near schools or playgrounds are no more likely to commit a sex crime than those living elsewhere.)

While the abduction, rape, and killing of children by strangers is very, very rare, such incidents receive a lot of media coverage, leading the public to overestimate how common these cases are. (See John Ruscio’s article “Risky Business: Vividness, Availability, and the Media Paradox” in the March/April 2000 Skeptical Inquirer.)

More at: http://www.csicop.org/si/2006-05/panic.html

Thank god somebody said it....

Dont get me wrong, child molesters deserve a slow and painful death... BUT the statistics on this are absolute bullcrap. I remember part of that survey, I said yes to the sexual solisiation part, because of a pop-up ad to a porn site popped up during school, when I was looking up something. We had JUST gotten access to the internet in 01, so yeah, the techies freaked out on me... but then looked at its location, and I was cleared from "browsing pornography on a school computer"



yeah, I doubt all media statistics, because figures dont lie, but liers can figure...

sells news though... bastards...
~Nate

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I would be okay with registries that included notification for ANY criminals living in my vicinity....robbers, murderers, etc. No need to limit to sex offenders. I often wonder WHY we are only concerned with sex. Then again, it IS the US.....home of the puritans.

We had a recent spate of publicity in Bham with couple running a rehab/ministry for sex offenders. Neighborhood didn't want them and found all kinds of laws (proximity to schools, churches, etc.) to close them down. The next location did the same. I just think if you can't allow these folks to start over, then lock them away for life. At least they would know what to expect.

Again, no particular sympathy. A criminal is a criminal IMHO.

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TClanton
1980 450SL 90K
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NIMBY. Not In My Neighborhood. Yes, you have paid your debt to society. However, I don't want you here. Go somewhere else but not here. Problem is that you cannot legally lock them up for life after the sentence ends so you are going to have to change the rules so that they are locked up for life. That will be a bitter pill for many to swallow

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People jump on the sex offender bandwagon because it's easy, there's no opposing constituency, and, hey, being just a little bit harsher on sex offenders can't be a bad thing.

Frankly, I think we as a society just need to figure out what exactly we want to do with these people (LWOP them for all I care), do it, and spend our political capital on something more novel and intellectually complex.

...someone here keeps trying to convince me that a lack of sex is reducing eyesight...

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funny you mention this,just last night on the news they were talking about how they want to make the sex offender laws even tougher here in iowa,the police in sioux city basically said because of the 2000 ft rule for day cares,schools,library etc,that the whole city was off limits for them to live in.but yet according to the law it was not against the law for them to be around these locations,they just couldn't live within 2000 ft of them.and because the law was so strict most of them were just giving the police false address'es.making it tougher to track em.

The greatest theat to kids is their own parents and close family. The vast majority are molested within the family.
As far as laws go this is a safe topic for elected officials to pass legislation and claim they have done something with out offending any one.

According to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, “the danger to teens is high.”



And that's just in the senate.

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Jason Priest
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First conviction, jail. Second conviction, execution or life in prison. That would solve the repeat offender problem.

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I agree totally. Although I have infrequent misgivings about the death penalty in some instances, I have never thought it any more approriate than for child molesters.

I agree. But unfortunately -

There’s little point in putting someone in a penitentiary, if the penitentiary is incapable of making someone penitent.

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I disagree
Second conviction......cut it off.

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There's an idea.
Actually, I think it's been done (repeat rapist, some years ago). Except they let the guy keep "it", and removed "them".
It's a testosterone thing.

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1980 300D - Veggie Burner !

Maybe we should get rid of the reform and penitent parts of the incarceration and just go with the penal system

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