Emotion processing and emotion regulation in people convicted of child sexual offences: building a contemporary evidence base

Context: This project will determine the extent to which people who have sexually offended against adult and child victims show problems in emotion processing and emotion regulation, which might represent key modifiable psychological processes that can be targeted in treatment to reduce reoffending. We will determine how participants process and respond to pleasant and unpleasant affective cues, and how they regulate their emotional responses to these cues, using a unique combination of experimental and physiological measures. Statistics show a steep upward trend in the number of sexual offences in England and Wales over the last decade. The number of sexual offences recorded by the police in the year ending March 2022 was the highest level recorded, 31% higher than the year ending March 2021. The challenge of addressing child sexual abuse: One of the key approaches to reducing sexual offending is to offer treatment to people who have sexually offended to help lower the risk that they will commit a new offence in the future. Although emotion processing and emotion regulation are widely considered to be risk factors for sexual offending, this is based on a limited body of work that predates current theory and research and is therefore of limited clinical utility. A multi-method examination of emotion processing and emotion regulation is crucial to inform risk management strategies and improve the treatment given to offenders. Objectives: The main objectives of the work proposed here are to use tests of emotion processing and emotion regulation to gain a more precise understanding of the psychological profiles of risk associated with sexual offending against adults and children, compared with people who have a history of non-sexual violent offending, and community controls. To achieve this, we need to know if people who have sexually offended against adult and child victims are distinguishable from violent and non-offender comparison groups, in 1) their processing of, and emotional reactivity to, pleasant and unpleasant affective cues; 2) their ability to withhold an action response when exposed to unpleasant affective cues; and 3) their use of emotion regulation strategies to down-regulate emotional reactivity to unpleasant affective cues. We will recruit participants from prison establishments in England and Wales, and we will recruit a comparison group of people without a history of offending from the local community. Potential applications and benefits: The results of this research will ensure that the treatment given to people who have sexually offended targets known risk factors and is informed by an up-to-date evidence base, with the aim of protecting victims from harm. We will publish our results in peer-reviewed scientific journals and present them to academic and practitioner audiences at national (e.g., the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse) and international (e.g., the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abuse) conferences. We will work with scientists, policy makers, and treatment providers, including the Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, and relevant charitable organisations, including the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, and The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, to inform evidence-based treatment and to help protect new victims from harm.