Describe your selected criminal behavior.
The criminal act or behavior that will be discussed is sex offense. Sex offenders are individuals that have committed crimes involving any type of sexual assault, non-sexual contact, and sexual battery. Within these types of acts, there are many forms such as rape, pedophiles, child sexual abuse, sodomy, sexual abuse, prostitution, indecent exposure, and non-contact sexual offenses (“Sex Offender Law & Legal Definition,” 2001).
According to Wikipedia (2015), although the majority of sex offenders have committed crimes of a sexual nature, many of the sex offenders have violated a law that is in a sexual category. In the state of California, if an individual has been cited for more than one indecent
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According to Samuels (2013), sex offenders are considered special due to the vulnerability within certain settings (prisons), and how the state and local counties have specialized programs to help treat these individual in behavior, criminality, and reducing recidivism rates. These programs are designed to manage the offender and to assess the likelihood of reoffending. As these treatments are being administrated, the therapist is targeting the identifying risk factors and applying appropriate consequences to risk-relevant sexual behavior (Samuels, 2013). This criminal behavior also leads to sex offenders’ registration. Upon release, the convicted sex offenders are mandated to register as a sex offender and therefore must notify their local community authorities of their place of residence in that the society may have access to all such offenders in their community (USLegal, 2001).
Discuss the etiology theories discussed in Module 2 as they pertain to your selected criminal behavior. According to the Center of Sex Offender Management, (n.d.), when treating sex offenders, many psychologist do not focus on the criminal act itself, but rather the risk factors and theories that may have caused this criminal behavior. They primarily focus of the therapist is the sexual deviant pattern and behaviors of the offenders. Some of these factors and theories are biological, behavioral, and
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In other words, it is believed that individuals learn this behavior by experiencing or being exposed to sexual deviant behavior. Bartol and Bartol (2012) also suggested that any form of sexual abuse in childhood can shaped longstanding cognitive problems. With this theory, not only being exposed at early onset, but also being exposed at early onset can cause some type of psychological effects. These psychological effects can cause sexual deviant behaviors. Yackovich (2012) stated that many sex offenders suffer from some type of mental disorders. Two of the common disorders are cognitive functioning deficit and emotional learning deficit. Due to these type of special risk factors, sex offenders engage in sexual deviant behavior. The last theory is the sociocultural theory. This theory states that the sexual deviant behavior is learned through desensitizing message in their environment such as music, films, and television. This theory is similar to behavioral in that the offender learns such criminal behavior through their surroundings (CSOM,