Comparison of intellectually disabled offenders with a combined history of sexual offenses and other offenses versus intellectually disabled offenders without a history of sexual offenses on dynamic client and environmental factors.
Adults with ID who offend carry the same dynamic risks whether or not they have sexual crimes in their past.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared two groups of adult offenders who all had intellectual disability.
One group had past sexual offenses plus other crimes. The other group had non-sexual crimes only.
They measured dynamic risk factors such as mood, social skills, and living situation.
What they found
Almost every factor looked the same in both groups.
Things like anger, impulsivity, and peer problems showed no clear difference.
Having a sexual offense on record did not point to a special risk profile.
How this fits with other research
Anderson et al. (2019) show U.S. data on adults with ID are scarce; this 2013 paper adds one of the few adult risk-factor sets we have.
Farmer et al. (2025) warn that wrong test scores can hide change; Capio et al. (2013) used stable risk tools, so their null finding is unlikely to be a measurement fluke.
Davis et al. (1994) found clinicians should not adjust ratings for mental age; Capio et al. (2013) took the same stance by comparing raw risk scores without IQ corrections.
Why it matters
If dynamic risks look alike, you can use one shared assessment for all ID offenders.
You do not need separate sexual-offense checklists.
Focus your treatment on the factors that actually move—substance use, anger control, and prosocial practice—no matter the crime type.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sexually offensive behavior is prevalent among individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) and many sex offenders also commit other offenses such as vandalism or assault. We examined the differences between sex offenders with ID and a history of combined sex and other types of offenses (mixed sex offenders) versus offenders with no history of sexual offenses (non-sex offenders). Dynamic client and environmental factors were measured using the Adult Behaviour Checklist (ABCL) and the Risk Inventarization Scale on Sexually Offensive Behavior of Clients with intellectual disabilities (RISC-V). Item, subscale, and total scores were then compared for the two groups. Most of the comparisons did not reveal significant differences between the two groups. The findings call for a general theory of offending behavior to explain the absence of differences between the mixed sex offenders and non-sex offenders with ID.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.06.027