Reactions of Criminal Sexual Offenders to Pornography: A Meta-Analytic Summary

Abstract

This chapter provides a summary of existing data on the impacts of pornography for a specially defined sample. The studies included were studies that used only criminal sexual offenders, either incarcerated or in treatment. The findings indicate no difference in the frequency of consuming sexually explicit materials (r = -.05) between criminal sexual offenders and noncriminal controls. However, criminal sexual offenders were more likely to use pornography prior to engaging in sexual behaviors (r = .23) than were noncriminal controls. Physiological measures of arousal indicate that although sexual offenders are generally more aroused by such material (r = .15), the correlation increases dramatically when the content of the material is matched to the crime committed by the individual (r = .48). The findings illustrate that it is the reaction to and function of the mass media material, not the frequency of consumption, that differentiates criminal sexual offenders from noncriminal controls.