Part IV.

Knowledge Development

In addition to recommendations on training and technical assistance efforts, many working groups strongly recommended investment in additional research. The following recommendations were made:

• Conduct research that will result in the development of juvenile typology profiles.
• Develop or refine a taxonomy of sex offenders.
• Conduct additional research on risk assessment, including: validation and cross-validation of risk assessment instruments on diverse samples of offenders, and risk assessment of female offenders.
• Conduct an outcome-based study of the effectiveness of the collaborative model.
• Identify a standard, or universal, set of measurable outcomes by which to gauge the effectiveness of treatment programs.
• Conduct research on the efficacy of various treatment and supervision approaches with specific offender populations.
• Conduct research on the fiscal impact of various legislative efforts to respond to sex offenders. Further, it was recommended that this effort result in a "tool" that jurisdictions can use to measure the fiscal impact of their own legislation.
• Conduct research on female sex offenders.
• Conduct research on victim trauma, including: the impact of the delay of detection on the victim, and the trauma victims experience when their victimization is detected through the polygraph and acted upon by the authorities.
• Conduct research on the biological contributors to sexual offending.
• Conduct research on the integration of the polygraph and the sexual predator law.