| Summary: | This thesis has explored the sexual offence crime investigation and risk management domains' from two interacting perspectives. It considered both the role and behaviour of the offender and the role and decision making of the investigator. The common theme was how can policing create a more balanced view of risk using evidenced based decisions. From a data set of 154 serial sexual offenders three questions were asked: what are the pathways of offending?' Do sexual offenders escalate? Do they specialise? Four pathways were derived as escalation, oscillation, maintenance and de-escalation; escalation was found in 13% of the offenders. The second part of the thesis then tested the decisions investigators made in a serial sexual offence scenario with an added stressor of time pressure. The results suggested that investigators did not make bad decision but omitted to make some important decisions. Furthermore, experience and intelligence acted as moderators of time pressure. The next part of the thesis considered a contemporary policing issue in terms of sexual offenders and resource decisions. What is the likelihood of an offender possessing indecent images of children (HOC) being a contact child sexual offender. The chapter compared a group of child sexual offenders who possessed HOC and a group of non-contact HOC possessing offenders. Contact and non-contact offenders could be discriminated by criminal convictions, access to children and the severity level of HOC possessed. More sadistic contact offenders possessed higher levels of HOC. The applications to policing knowledge bases were outlined. The findings were considered in terms of the contributions to psychological and criminological literature with two new models of decision making and sexual offending presented.
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