Investigating Disclosures Made by Sexual Offenders: Preliminary Study for the Evaluation of Mandatory Polygraph Testing

This project was the preliminary study in a programme of research to evaluate mandatory polygraph testing of sexual offenders. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is piloting mandatory polygraph testing in the East Midlands and West Midlands probation regions for offenders supervised on licence following release from a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. The pilot commenced in April 2009 and will run for three years. Previous research (Grubin, 2006) suggested that the polygraph might contribute to the effective treatment and supervision of sex offenders through encouraging offenders to disclose information.1 Therefore, an increase in clinically significant disclosures will form the key outcome measure for the evaluation of the mandatory polygraph pilot