MCMI-III Profiles of Convicted Contact Sexual Offenders: A Cluster Analysis

ABSTRACT

As suggested by previous research, the study of personality traits among sexual offenders could be an important consideration in the understanding of sexual offending. This study aims to explore the possibility of classifying sexual offenders according to their personality profiles. Based on the MCMI-III scores of 97 convicted contact sexual offenders, a cluster hierarchical analysis was performed. Next, the groups were characterized according to their sociodemographic and criminological variables and significant differences between them were sought. The two clusters found did not show different MCMI-III prototypical personality profiles, and both groups only varied in the degree of general psychopathology. The results suggest the existence of two personality profiles labeled as “pathological” and “adapted/non-pathological”. The usefulness of the MCMI-III in the evaluation of sexual offenders seems limited to the detection of the presence or absence of general psychopathological symptoms. Implications of these findings for interventions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual offenders
• sexual abuse
• rape
• MCMI-III
• personality
• cluster analysis

Correction Statement

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Notes

¹ According to the Spanish Criminal Code, the only difference between sexual abuse and sexual assault is the use of violence or intimidation by the perpetrator. In both cases the victim has not given a valid sexual consent. Since 2015 the age of sexual consent is fixed at 16 years (previously at 13).

² Provided that there are elevations in social desirability response bias (M = 86.51), but not in the syndrome subscales; as shown in Table 2.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by an FPU grant (FPU14/00923), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. We thank the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions (Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs) for authorizing this research, as well as to the staff of Valencia and Villena’s prisons. We also thank Yolanda Sáez Díaz for her help in data collection.