History of the Assessment of Sex Offenders

D. Richard Laws received his Ph.D. from Southern IllinoisUniversity-Carbondale in 1969. He wasdirector of the Sexual Behavior Laboratory at Atascadero State Hospital inCalifornia from 1970-1985; project director at the Florida Mental HealthInstitute, Tampa, from 1985-1989; manager of forensic psychology at AlbertaHospital, Edmonton, Alberta from 1989-1994; and as a forensic psychologist withAdult Forensic Psychiatric Community Services in Victoria, British Columbiafrom 1994-1999. Dr Laws has published widely in the area of sexual abuse and isbest known as a developer of assessment procedures and behavior therapies.

• Part 1: Introduction Chapter 1. Contemporary psychological assessment: Two approaches Part 2: Assessment of Criminal & Sex Offenders, 19th and 20th Centuries Chapter 2. Criminal statistics and the identification of populationsChapter 3. Offender classification and registration Chapter 4. Phrenology: Pseudoscience of the Mind or Precursor Science? Chapter 5. Criminal anthropology: Lombroso's search for Criminal Man Chapter 6. Anthropometry: Bertillon's measurement of Criminal Man Chapter 7. Fingerprinting: A document complete in itself Part 3: Assessment of Sex Offenders, 20th and 21st Centuries Chapter 8. Psychophysiological assessment: Penile plethysmography Chapter 9. Viewing time: An attention-based measure Chapter 10. Attention-based measures: Supplementary procedures Chapter 11. Polygraphy: Valid procedure or bogus pipeline? Part 4: Assessment of Sex Offenders: Possible Futures Chapter 12. Virtual reality assessment: Is anybody there? Part 5: Conclusions Chapter 13. What we learned in 190 years: 12 takeaways