NCJ Number
174077
Date Published
1998
Length
32 pages
Annotation
Sex offenders are extremely reluctant to disclose their sex offending histories for a variety of psychosocial and legal reasons, and the polygraph has potential as a tool for eliciting admissions of past sex offending behaviors.
Abstract
To evaluate the use of the polygraph with 60 adult male sex offender inmates and parolees under the jurisdiction of the Colorado Department of Corrections, information on victims and offenses was recorded from the Presentence Investigative Report, the Sexual History Disclosure form, and two consecutive polygraph examination reports. The polygraph examination process contained both pre-test and post-test components. Dramatic increases in the number of admitted victims and offenses were found for inmates but not for parolees. This suggested a very strong environment effect for parolees not to disclose information about their sex offending histories. There was a substantial decline, however, in the number of victim and offense admissions by the second polygraph for both groups, even though 80 percent of polygraph examinations showed deception on sex offending behaviors. For deceptive polygraphs, inmates tended to have more admissions to both high-risk behaviors and past sex offending behaviors, whereas parolees tended to have more admissions to just high-risk behaviors. Among both inmates and parolees, significantly less victim and offense information was obtained by the second polygraph, and this finding was compounded by the fact that most polygraph results were deceptive. The authors conclude the polygraph is an effective and affordable tool for eliciting admissions of past sex offending behaviors, but they propose the standard use of sanctions for deceptive polygraph results. 26 references, 6 tables, and 4 figures