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The Edmonton Police Service will review the findings of a research paper investigating four years of sexual assault data to see how it could shape future investigations.

Author Sandy Jung, an associate professor of psychology at MacEwan University, shared her findings Thursday with police and the Edmonton Police Commission, outlining characteristics of sexual assault cases in Edmonton.

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Her paper also looked to see if existing sexual violence risk assessment measures could be used to “predict further violent and sexual offending, specifically future criminal charges and convictions.”

Jung’s research concluded that “the use of risk assessment may be helpful by allocating more resources to higher risk perpetrators and therefore reduce further perpetration of sexual violence.”

Following her presentation, Jung said using an “empirically validated” method to help identify, monitor and shape things such as bail conditions to prevent further sexual assaults was crucial.

“I think that’s more pertinent because then we are preventing them from entering the community and committing a further assault,” she said.

Jung’s report whittled 2,569 occurrences of sexual assaults against victims aged 16 and older between 2010 and 2014 to 865 distinct cases where a perpetrator could be identified. Jung also used a randomly selected sample of 300 cases to further examine offence, perpetrator and victim characteristics.