Alaska Sex Offender Recidivism and Case Processing Study: Final Report

Abstract

Part I of this report provides updated estimates of Alaska sex offender recidivism, expanding the post-inarceration follow-up period from two years (as used in previous studies) to seven years in order to better understand sex offender desistance from crime. Study data was obtained from the Alaska Department of Corrections and the Alaska Department of Public Safety. The initial analysis sample included all persons who were convicted of one or more registerable sexual offenses and subsequently released from incarceration between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008. Of the 433 persons who met this critera, 27 died after release from institutional custody, leaving 406 sex offenders in the final analysis sample. In Part II of this report, data on individuals arrested at least once for the commission of one or more registerable sex offenses from 2008 to 2011 — a total of 1,179 individual suspects — were extracted from the criminal justice data repository maintained by the Alaska Department of Public Safety. This data was analyzed to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of Alaska’s criminal history repository data on sex offenses and to explore the quality of those data for examining case processing of misdemeanor and felony offenses.