The use of actuarial risk assessment measures with UK internet child pornography offenders

The present study investigates the use of two actuarial assessment measures – Risk Matrix 2000 (Thornton et al, 2003) and Static 99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) – with individuals convicted of downloading child pornography on the internet. A UK community-based sample of convicted internet sex offenders (n = 73) was assessed using both a standard and a revised version of RM2000 and Static 99 and assessed for rates of reconviction. None of the offenders in the sample were convicted of a further sexual crime between a one-and-a-half and fouryear follow-up. These results suggest reconviction rates for internet sex offenders are lower than for contact child sex offenders. It was found that both the standard version of RM2000 and Static-99 overestimate the risk levels posed by internet offenders and that an adapted version of RM2000 may be a more realistic measure of risk level in this population. In addition, it was noted that a higher frequency of low-risk offenders appeared to be accessing images of younger children and images depicting more serious victimisation than high-risk offenders.