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48 Canadian J. Criminology & Crim. Just. 103 (2006)
Long-Term Follow-up Studies are Difficult: Comment on Langevin et al. (2004)

handle is hein.journals/cjccj48 and id is 109 raw text is: Long-Term Follow-Up Studies Are Difficult: Comment on Langevin et al. (2004) R. Karl Hanson Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada Understanding the long-term recidivism rates of sexual offenders is an important research topic with considerable implications for criminal justice policies. Estimating long-term recidivism rates is difficult, however, because the behaviour of interest is hidden by the offenders and infrequently reported by the victims. Researchers can only count offending that appears in the available records. As Dr Langevin is acutely aware, the correspondence between existing records and actual offending is far from ideal. Many cases do not result in convictions, and many convictions do not appear on the databases available to researchers. How researchers address these lacunae will influence the results they obtain. It appears that the way in which Langevin, Curnoe, Fedoroff, Bennett, Langevin, Peever, Pettica, and Sandhu (2004) dealt with missing data inflated the observed recidivism rates of their sample. In an earlier report of the same data set, Langevin and Fedoroff (2000) reported that they were able to obtain follow-up criminal history records for 378 (54%) of the first 700 cases assessed at Dr Langevin's clinic between 1969 and 1974. In the 2004 report, the offenders lacking criminal history records in 1994 and 1999 were eliminated from the sample. Such a decision would retain recidivists and eliminate non- recidivists. The RCMP policies for retaining criminal history records have changed through the years, but they have always been more inclined to keep the records of active offenders (recidivists) than to keep those of inactive offenders (non-recidivists). In 1993, for example, the purge policy was that all convictions would be removed from the RCMP database if the offender (a) died, (b) was pardoned, or (c) attained age 70 and had no criminal activity for 10 years, or if (d) there was no recorded criminal activity for 15 years, provided that the offender was not the subject of a current investigation (Purge Unit, RCMP 1993). Given that the follow-up period in Langevin's study was more than 15 years, all of the inactive (non-recidivist) offenders should have been deleted from the RCMP database. © 2006 qCCJlRCCJP

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