The Truth About Repeat Sex Offenders
California: Wilson's claim of 75% recidivism is refuted by the state's own
statistics; most convicts don't 'keep doing it.'

By FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING

When Gov. Pete Wilson signed California's "chemical
castration" law last September, he told a press conference
that child molesters "have a drive to do what they do. As long as
they have that drive, they'll keep doing itunless we do something
about it first." To support this assertion, he cited Department of
Corrections statistics that "more than half of all paroled sex
offenders will commit a new sex offense or parole violation less than
a year after being released from prison, and that three out of four
will commit a new offense or parole violation within two years."
These shocking statistics were the official rationale for a regimen of
compulsory chemical treatments unprecedented in AngloAmerican
law.
This claim of 75% recidivism for sex offenders concerned me
because for decades, the research experience around the world has
come to different conclusions. Researchers in other American states
and in Scandinavia found that, far from being compelled to "keep
doing it," sexual offenders relapse into crime more rarely than do
criminals convicted of offenses against property. Did California have
a new kind of sex offender, or were the governor's statistics
mistaken?
It turns out that 75% recidivism after two years is simply false,
directly contradicted by Department of Corrections statistics. The
usual charge at conviction for child molesters is lewd conduct, and
the last time California did a twoyear followup study of persons
released after serving time for this offense, 17% had been returned
for a new offense or parole violation after one year and 26% after
two years. Wilson asserted that half of sex offenders commit repeat
offenses within a year. This is three times the rate the Department of
Corrections found for the child molester group. The statistics
suggest that the governor's 75% return figure is upside down: 74%
of the lewd conduct group have not been returned to prison after
two years.
When child molesters are compared to other types of criminals,
the same pattern of lower recidivism that was found elsewhere is
found in California. The twoyear return rate for the 1,037 lewd
conduct releasees was less than half the rate reported for burglars
and robbers released in 1991 and lower than for any other of the
major crime categories.
And it is not just child molesters that have relatively good release
records. In the 1991 release group, less than a third of all sex
offenders were returned for any reason after two years. The only
crime categories with comparable low rates were those of drunk
driving and vehicular homicide. That pattern holds true in further
studies completed in 1995 and 1996.
Of the 26% who do return to prison after two years, in many
cases it is for technical violations such as failure to register as a sex
offender.
So where did the governor's inflated recidivism estimates come
from? Some years ago, the Department of Corrections assembled a
small cohort of sex offenders to serve as a comparison to a group
given special counseling for sex criminals. Because the control
group's members had many repeat failures, it was at specially high
risk for further failures. The Department of Corrections reported
that 62% of this group were returned to prison within two years.
This must be the group the governor was citing, but even there, his
facts are scrambled. Only 15% of even this specialrisk group
committed a sex crime within the twoyear followup period. Most
of these highrisk offenders only were returned to prison for failing
to register with local authorities or for other offenses of a nonsexual
nature.
The frightening thing about this matter is that the state
government has a monopoly on information about the parole
histories of California sex offenders. When official data are
misrepresented, citizens have no alternative route to the facts. It is a
close question, however, whether the disinformation provided in this
chapter of California history is as scary as the willingness of those in
high positions of governmental responsibility to disserve the public
need for information. The first casualty in this war on crime was the
truth. The second casualty is the honor of public officials.


Franklin E. Zimring Is a Professor of Law and Director of the Earl
Warren Legal Institute at Uc Berkeley

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