Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This article was submitted to Health Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s and the copyright owner s are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. The prevention of sexual violence is a major goal of sexual health. In cases of accused sexual offenders, the assessment of diminished criminal responsibility of the accused is one of the most important procedures undertaken by experts in the German legal system.
This assessment follows a two-stage method assessing first the severity of a paraphilic disorder and then second criteria for or against diminished capacity. The present study examines the predictive validity of two different sets of criteria for the assessment of criminal responsibility in the context of paraphilic disorders combined with sexual offending. Two exemplary case vignettes of two suspected sexual offenders were developed to assess the criteria. For each participant, one of the two exemplary case vignettes was randomly presented.
The presentation of the two different sets of criteria was also randomized, so that each participant was assigned only one of the two criteria sets to rate one of the presented cases. The data were evaluated using logistic regression. However, the proposed criteria cannot replace an extensive exploration of the accused person and a careful file analysis. Validity and reliability of the results are also limited due to the methodical choice of a vignette study. Keywords: assessment, criminal responsibility, sexual violence, sexual offender, paraphilic disorders.
The assessment of criminal responsibility is subject to the individual national legal system and is therefore handled heterogeneously. It represents, besides matters of legal prognosis of criminal offenders and of credibility assessment, the most common task for psychiatric and psychological experts in German court proceedings.
