Against All Odds: The Unexplained Sexual Recidivism Drop in the United States and Canada

Abstract

Since the late 1930s, laws and policies based on assumptions about high rates of sexual recidivism have been enacted to respond to individuals who perpetrated sexual offenses. The first sex offender laws in the United States and Canada were quite similar. Since then, the two countries have diverged. More recent American policies have included the enactment of public registration and notification laws and postsentence civil commitment laws. Canadian policies reaffirming rehabilitation were criticized by various groups for being too lenient. Little has been done to monitor the evolution of sexual recidivism rates, including effects, if any, of significant policy changes. The lack of centralized databases in Canada and the United States for monitoring recidivism rates over time is a major reason. In lieu of that, a systematic review and meta-analysis were used to examine 227 Canadian and 399 American estimations of sexual recidivism among 388,994 perpetrators of sexual offenses. Weighted pooled estimates of sexual recidivism rates were investigated between 1940 and 2019. Sexual recidivism rates reported in American studies have been low and dropping since the 1970s, well before enactment of public registration and notification laws. A more pronounced drop was observed in Canadian studies despite the absence of public registration and notification laws.