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Rearrest for a sex crime against a child Undercounts of sex crimes against children Rearrest Sex offenders compared to non-sex offenders This section documents percentages of men who were arrested for a sex crime against a child after their release from prison in 1994. To some unknown extent, these recidivism rates under- count actual rearrest rates. That is because the arrest records that the study used to document sex crime arrests did not always contain enough information to identify those sex crime arrests in which the victim of the crime was a child. Some sense of the poten- tial size of the undercount can be gained by comparing rearrests for any sex crime and rearrests for any sex crime against a child. Rates of rearrest for a sex crime (tables 21 and 22) are from 2 to 3'/? percentage points higher than rates of rearrest for a sex crime against a child (tables 34 and 35), suggesting that rates of rearrest for a sex crime against a child could be, at most, a few percentage points below actual rates. No data on precise ages of molested children This section also documents the ages of the children that the men were alleged to have molested after their release from prison. Sex crime statutes contained in the arrest records of the released prisoners were used to obtain ages. The first step was to identify those sex crime statutes that were applicable just to children. Among those that were, some were found to apply just to children whose age fell within a certain range (for example, under 12, or 13 to 15, or 16 to 17). Those statutes applicable to children within specified age ranges became the source of information on the approximate ages of the allegedly molested children. Information on precise ages could not be determined because statutes applicable just to children of a specific age (for example, just to 12-year-olds, or just to age 15-year-olds) do not exist. A// sex offenders Following their release in 1994, 209 of the total 9,691 released sex offend- ers (2.2%) were rearrested for a sex offense against a child (table 34). For virtually all 209, the rearrest offense was a felony. For the reason given earlier, the 2.2% figure undercounts the percentage rearrested for a sex offense against a child. It seems unlikely that the correct figure could be as high as 5.3% (table 21), which is the percentage rearrested for a sex crime against a person of any age. The only way it could be that high is if none of the sex crime arrests after release were crimes in which the victim was an adult, an unlikely possibility. The more likely possibility is that the 2.2% figure undercounts the rate by a maximum of 1 or 2 percentage points. An estimated 76% of the children alleg- edly molested by the 209 men after their prison release were age 13 or younger, 12% were 14- or 15-years- old, and the remaining 12% were 16- or 17-years-old. Prisons in the 15 States in the study released 272,111 prisoners altogether in 1994, 9,691 of whom were the sex offenders in this report. As previously stated, 2.2% of the 9,691 sex offenders were rearrested for a child sex crime after their release. That rate is high compared to the rate for the remaining 262,420 non-sex offenders. Of the 262,420 non-sex offenders, less than half of 1 percent (1,042 of the 262,420) were rearrested for a sex offense against a child within the 3-year followup period (not shown in table). Since each of the 1 ,042 was charged at arrest with molesting at least 1 child, the total number they allegedly moles- ted was conservatively estimated at 1,042. Of the conservatively estimated 1,042 children, 65% were age 13 or younger, 1 1 % were 14- or 15-years- old, and 24% were 16- or 17-years-old (not shown in table). (These percent- ages were based on the 554 cases out of the 1,042 in which the approximate age of the child could be determined.) Table 34. Of sex offenders released from prison in '1994, percent rearrested for a sex crime against a child, and percent of their alleged victims, by age of victim and type of sex offender Percent rearrested for a sex crime against a child within 3 years Sexual All Rapists assaulters Total 2.2% 1 .4 % 2.5 Number released 9,69'1 3,11 S 6,576 Age of child that sex offender was Percent of charged with molesting after release allegedly molested children 13 or younger 76.2% 89.3 % 72.3 14-15 11.5 O.O` '14.9 16-17 '12.3 '10.7' '12.8 Number of molested children 209 44 ? 65 Note: The 9,69'1 sex offenders were released in 15 States. The approximate ages of the children allegedly molested by the 209 prisoners after their release were available for 58.4% of the 209. "Number of molested children" was set to equal the number of released sex offenders rearrested for child molesting. 'Percentage based on 1 O or fewer cases. 30 Recidivism of Sex Offenders Re/eased from Prison in 1994 5OA-79