Psychology of Serial Rapist

Serial rapist are people that rape several people over a span of time. They end up getting arrested; they serve their time in prison and get released. In time after their release they rape someone else and subsequently become more violent towards their victims. The articles included looked at several studies, which look at the behavior characteristics and the psychology of a rapist. The five articles that are mentioned are about studies that were done to determine the psychology and behavior characteristics of a serial rapist. An extensive search of literature in this area has revealed that there are a few studies that have examined behavioral characteristics alone in an attempt to understand the behavior of rapists.

After serving time, serial rapist are being released, where most of the time they become repeat offenders and end up back in prison. They sometimes even become more violent towards their victims. According to Grace (1994) a study was conducted on two serial rapist that ended up being repeat offenders and the police suggested to the prosecutor that they be deemed dangerous men so that they could not be released and harm anyone else. Also in the article by Grace (1994) the CPA suggest that if a third offense occurs while a person is on parole that it be automatically asked that an offender be deemed a dangerous one. In Teel (1996) there was a similar circumstance were George Bernard Hall served nine years for rape, was released from prison, robbed a liquor store and the next day he raped a women. When he was arrested the detective recommended that he be deemed a dangerous offender so he expected Hall to put up a fight stating that he had not committed the crimes but he got the complete opposite where Hall admitted to all the crimes even though that would give him a life sentence. These two articles are about similar circumstances where rapist were released from prison and raped other women and were more violent and committed other crimes. The difference is that George Bernard Hall agreed with the detective and prosecutor and said that he was a dangerous offender and should serve an indefinite jail sentence so that he could not harm more women, where as in the article by Grace the first one killed himself and the detective suggested that the second one be deemed a dangerous offender.

There are studies that have been done to determine the psychopathic or non-psychopathic behaviors of sexual offenders. In Porter, S., ten Brinke, L., & Wilson, K. (2009) they looked at 310 men that were in prison for a sexual offence. They did a study to determine if they were psychopathic or non- psychopathic offenders. Of the 310 offenders in the sample, 90 were rated as being psychopathic (having a minimum score of 30 on the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist -Revised)). Considering offender type, there were 99 rapists tested (36 diagnosed as being psychopathic), 88 child molesters tested (7 diagnosed as being psychopathic), 24 mixed rapist/molesters tested (15 diagnosed as being psychopathic), and 99 non-sex offenders tested (32 diagnosed as being psychopathic) for a total of 90 psychopathic offenders (pg. 4). There are two graphs in this article one shows the four groups that they were broken down into and shows how many were psychopathic and how many were non psychopathic out of all the groups. The other graph broke it down into sex offenders and non sex offenders and shows how many of each group is psychopathic and how many are non-psychopathic refer to appendix A to view the graphs. This article is about a study that was done to determine how the psychopath behavior of a sexual offender. By being deemed a psychopathic offender it can add time to the person's sentence or not allow them to get parole or be released from prison.

There are also studies that just look at the behavioral characteristics of a sexual offender. In McCabe, M. P., & Wauchope, M. (2005) they did two separate studies on the behavioral characteristics of a serial rapist. In study one their aim was to view the behavioral characteristics of the rapist. They collected data on one hundred and thirty men that had been charged with sexual assault and used the information from a violent crime analysis report. They looked at the Victorian Police's Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System 263 questions that focus on areas such as the classification of the crime; the possible motive(s) for the crime; the victim and his/her demographic and identifiable information; the offender and his