Predicting the criminal antecedents of a stranger rapist from his offence behaviour

Approximately 85% of stranger rapists have criminal records, which usually contain a mixture of crime types. This study was designed to ascertain if inferences about such records could be made from aspects of offence behaviour, as described by the rape victims, focusing on both non-sexual behaviours and traits more obviously associated with previous criminality. The statistical technique used was logistic regression. The results demonstrated that it was very possible to obtain indications of a rapist's criminal antecedents from his offence behaviour. The three most promising models were those that predicted whether or not the offender had convictions for burglary, whether or not he had convictions for violent offences, and whether the offence was an apparent 'one-off' occurrence rather than the work of an experienced rapist.