The coexistence of mental retardation and sex-related criminality among retarded criminal offenders creates substantial difficulties to the criminal justice system in determining the defendant's criminal responsibility and to human service professionals in designing effective treatment programs. Regardless of criminal charges, sex-related or not, this study shows that offenders are more likely to be diagnosed as having severe mental retardation if they have a severe deficit in adaptive behavior or a low IQ score. This study's results also indicate that mentally retarded sex offenders are rarely distinguishable from other retarded offenders in terms of mental retardation, IQ, and deficits in adaptive behavior.
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