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Exploring Juvenile Sex Offenders: Legal Reactions, Treatment Issues, and Future Considerations

Delve into the complex issues surrounding juvenile sex offenders, from legal reactions to treatment challenges and potential alternatives. Learn about recidivism rates, treatment models, and the stigma associated with notification. Source: Sample & Bray (2003).

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Exploring Juvenile Sex Offenders: Legal Reactions, Treatment Issues, and Future Considerations

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  1. Juvenile Sex Offenders Class 21

  2. Last Class • Why not a Specialized Juvenile Court for sex offenders?

  3. Four Issues • Definitions • Sex Offenders and the Conundrum of Adolescence • Determinism • Assumptions of Inevitability and Stability of Sex Offending • Legal Reactions • Punishment • Beyond Punishment • Imagining Alternatives • Legal and Social Policy

  4. Behavioral Considerations in Defining Sex Offenders • “Age appropriateness” considerations • Heuristic Categories • Non-contact sexual behaviors • Experimentation • Coercion • Violence • Similar explanations? • Co-morbidity of other mental health conditions • Behavioral co-morbidity

  5. Determinism • Twin Issues motivating laws • Inevitability of subsequent offending (prediction problem) • Inevitability of treatment failure • Recidivism of treatment participants over age-graded base rate of re-offending • Do improvements in the prediction of violence translate into better predictions of sex offending • For adults? • For juveniles? • Data • 7-13% recidivism rates over 5 years, compared to 50% for other offenses

  6. Problems and Issues with Treatment • What are we treating? • Heterogeneity of causal paths • Co-morbid mental health conditions • Co-morbid sexual deviance • Immaturity dimensions • Social judgment, risk taking, thrill seeking, impulsivity • How are we treating it? • Addiction models • Behaviorist models • Psychogenic models

  7. Source: Lisa L. Sample and Timothy M. Bray, Are Sex Offenders Dangerous? 3Criminology and Public Policy 59-82 (2003).

  8. Legal Reactions • Jurisdictional Boundary – preference for waiver for more serious cases • Punishment • Contradiction of jurisdictional transfer and therapeutic regime -- Waiver has its own effects that complicate treatment • Limitations on correctional treatment of juvenile sex offenders in adult correctional placements

  9. Beyond Punishment • Civil Commitment • Prediction problems are reified into inevitability by statute and case law • Hendricks, Crane – commitment limited to those who are “violent” or dangerous • Registration and Notification • Thresholds to mandate registration • Methods of notification • Adolescent-specific jurisprudence (Ohio) • Offenses – broader or narrower than for adults? • Different risk thresholds, 3 tiers • Different procedures for notification at each tier • Limitations of registration at each tier

  10. Notification and the Stigma Avoidance Prong of the Juvenile Court • Defeated by notification? • Ring Issues • Evidentiary hearing to determine recidivism risk

  11. Alternatives • Bankruptcy Model • Non-criminal • Leveraging power of the court • Greater authority to respond to supply of services • Mutual accountability between court, service providers, and offender • Inherently democratic

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