State Studies Sex Offender Classifications

TRENTON — New Jersey is teaming with five other states in trying to determine whether the federally proposed sex offender classification system works as well as others in predicting offender recidivism.
The state Department of Corrections (DOC) announced on Oct. 6 that it was awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice, the research and development branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The grant will fund a 24-month study comparing the three-tiered classification system defined in the 2006 Sex Offender Notification and Registration Act (SORNA) to STATIC-99, another assessment tool used by New Jersey and other states.
The study team will be gathering information from offenders in six states: Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“We have an excellent team including Dr. R. Karl Hanson, who created the STATIC-99 assessment,” said DOC researcher Dr. Kristen Zgoba, who helped develop the study. “We’re all colleagues that have worked together before on similar studies.”
The ultimate goal of the study, Zgoba told the Herald, is to determine which assessment best predicts offender recidivism. Researchers will do that by recording state tier levels for sex offenders and then classified for recidivism using both SORNA and STATIC-99. Results will be determined both within and across the participating states.
“The goal of SORNA is to standardize the sex offender classification system,” she said.
SORNA tiers are based on the severity of sex crime offenders committed.
Tier I offences are relatively minor and those offenders are determined to be low risks to re-offend; Tier II offenders committed more serious crimes and are more likely to commit future crimes; and Tier III offenders committed the most serious crimes and are the highest risk to re-offend.
STATIC-99, however, is designed to estimate the probability of sexual and violent recidivism among adult males who have already been convicted of at least one sexual offense based on 10 “static” or fixed indicators:
• Age
• Commitment
• Current convictions for non-sexual violence
• Prior convictions for non-sexual violence
• Prior sexual offenses
• Prior sentencing dates
• Any convictions for non-contact sex offenses
• Unrelated victims
• Stranger victims
• Male victims
Evaluators assign points for recidivism likelihood. Offenders scoring either “0” or “1” are categorized as low risk, “2” or “3” are moderate-low, “4” or “5” are moderate-high, and between “6” and “12” are considered high risk.
According to a DOC release, the project is expected to begin in the upcoming weeks.
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com