Be sure to click on link in story and read that!4-9-15 Foreign Study:
Genetic factors were found to increase the risk of a sex crime conviction
A new study of thousands of male sex offenders found that close relatives of people convicted of sexual offenses were up to five times more likely than average to commit similar offenses themselves.
Researchers found that about 2.5 percent of brothers and sons of convicted sex offenders are themselves convicted of sexual offences, compared to about 0.5 percent of the wider public. The correlation, according to the study, is largely due to genetic factors rather than shared family environments.
“Importantly, this does not imply that sons or brothers of sex offenders inevitably become offenders too”, Niklas Langstrom, professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “But although sex crime convictions are relatively few overall, our study shows that the family risk increase is substantial. Preventive treatment for families at risk could possibly reduce the number of future victims.”
The study, which analyzed data on 21,566 men convicted of sex offenses in Sweden between 1973 and 2009, was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. ..Source.. by Noah Rayman
I'm off two minds about this. If there is an increased risk of offending based largely on genetic factors, then we can extrapolate to say a couple of things. One: We should be able to locate the exact genetic markers that predispose to sexual offending and Two: Do we need to reconsider the culpability aspect, or is the tendency toward sex offending a disease, much like alcoholism. Once we get it, what do we do with any of this information? Knowing how hideously society treats offenders, do we WANT this kind of information at all? Do I start looking suspiciously at people just because they are related to an SO? I think this could very easily go awry.
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