Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Howes, R. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Howes, R. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Plethysmographic Assessment of Incarcerated Nonsexual Offenders: A Comparison with Rapists

Richard J. Howes

Stony Mountain Institution, P.O. Box 4500, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 3W8

Plethysmographic testing was completed on 100 research participants from the same medium-security prison population, 50 of whom were incarcerated for nonsexual offenses. In order to strengthen the validity of the research, only participants who achieved full arousal were included in the sample, and the percentage of full erection scores, as well as the Rape Index, were examined. The resulting sexual arousal profiles revealed striking similarities between rapists and control participants, indicating that deviant arousal alone did not distinguish these sexual offenders from nonsexual offenders. The only marked difference between the two groups was in the almost-perfect ability of control participants to inhibit deviant arousal and the weak ability of sexual offenders to accomplish this. The suggestion was advanced that a determination of an offender's ability to inhibit deviant arousal may be the only aspect of plethysmographic testing which has practical application in the assessment of rapists.

Key Words: aggressive sexuality • penile plethysmography • phallometry • rape • risk assessment • sexual impulse control • sexual offender recidivism • stimulus generalization.

Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, Vol. 10, No. 3, 183-194 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/107906329801000303
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?