Dynamic Risk Factors for Sexual Offending: Causal Considerations by Roxanne Heffernan & Tony Ward

Author:Roxanne Heffernan & Tony Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030582753
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

3.5 DRF as Boundary Objects

Recent theoretical work on classification in correctional and forensic psychology has focused on the kind of objects that DRF are and has gone beyond simply seeing them as summaries of different kinds of factors. Ward et al. (in press b) note that a variety of “objects”1 are contained within different forensic and correctional classification systems, including disorders (e.g., psychopathy), motives and needs, offending behaviors, cognition, risk factors, offence pathways, and developmental trajectories. More abstractly, the units of analysis can be divided into classification systems that cover the person, their actions across domains and over time, and the contexts within which they offend (for a discussion of boundary objects in forensic psychology see Ward, Durrant, & Dixon, in press b).

A problem arising from the variety of classification systems currently used in the criminal justice field is that it is unclear whether systems built with different units of analysis can be meaningfully compared. This problems extends to within offence categories (e.g., types of sex offending) and across different categories of crime (e.g., sexual versus violent offending). For example, typologies of child sexual offending may be centered around types of offence pathways, crime scene characteristics, preferred victims, or sexual arousal patterns. Each type of classification system is focused on a different unit of analysis: sequences of behavior, individual characteristics, or contextual features. To make things more complex, each of these units may be subdivided into more fine-grained ones (individual: sexual preferences, cognitive distortions, levels of behavioral control, personality features, etc.). The question is: are these descriptions of one object (e.g., sexual offending) or multiple, possibly unrelated ones? The conceptual units of each of the classification systems used within correctional systems are different and focus on varying properties and types of objects. This is conceptually confusing and likely to result in increasingly fragmented, uncoordinated research.

One possible solution to the number of classification systems across different types of crime and within offence categories is to utilize the concept of boundary objects, developed by the sociologist of science, Leigh Star (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Her work centred on describing the practices of collecting, preparing, and exhibiting animals in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, at the University of California, Berkeley. Star was struck by the fact that different professional groups (e.g., scientists, academics, hunters, amateur collectors, patrons, members of the public) saw the objects in the collection in quite distinctive ways and classified them according to their own interests and knowledge bases. This created the puzzle of how best to integrate or at least link their varying viewpoints, and by doing so, further research and practice. Her solution was to invent the concept of a boundary object that was both a common representation of an object (a specimen; epistemology) and the object itself (ontology). The reference to the term “boundary” was intended to capture the interdisciplinary, and multiple perspectives of the object; crossing different professional and theoretical boundaries. More specifically:

Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs

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