Sex Offender Management Assessment and Planning Initiative

Excerpt:  “Creating a complete and accurate accounting of the extent of sexual offending is challenging. First, there is no single definition of sexual offending. Statutory definitions of sex offenses differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; a sex crime committed in one state might not be classified as a sex crime in an adjacent state. State laws differ on whether rape must involve physical force or threats of physical force, and so on. Even when using national standards, such as the categories reported by the 17,000 police departments submitting Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it is impossible for each officer in each department to use the same exact criteria to decide how to classify a crime. … With these challenges in mind, following is a review of key data sources and what they reveal about the incidence and prevalence of sexual offending.”