Juvenile Sex Offenders - critical analysis

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Integrated Critical Analysis: JSOs

This study proposes to look into the social issue and phenomenon of Juvenile Sex Offenders of JSOs. This topic, I feel is an extremely important concern to understand. A report by Lobanov-Rostovsky (2014) for the Office of Justice Programs showed that 1/3 of those who commit Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) are themselves juveniles, and with only 30% of cases reported to the authorities, if we are to base it on the annual reported rapes and sexual abuse of around 346,830 cases for victims aged 12 and above in 2012, the number of sexual abuse victimization, including CSA across the US can cross a million per year, according to the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART)(2016) of the US Department of Justice. Of the 400,000 registered sex offenders in the US, 23% of these were or are under 18 when they committed their crimes. I would like to explore this topic to delve into the types of crimes that JSOs commit, and if intellectual abilities contribute to the types of offense they commit. I would also like to determine risk factors involved in relation to the development of sexual predatory and abusive behavior among JSOs. I feel that with limited criminal histories, developmental differences in comparison to adult sexual offenders as well as future consequences, unique rehabilitation and treatment strategies for JSOs must be considered to create effective measures in both preventative and protective goals.

While there are a number of avenues for investigation that can be explored, I have centered on the current programs utilized to rehabilitate and treat JSOs especially in relation to their rate of effectiveness as well as in relation to recidivism. According to Przybylski (2014), "therapeutic interventions for juveniles who sexually offend have become a staple of sex offender management practice in jurisdictions across the country...Yet, despite the growth and widespread use of treatment with juveniles who sexually offend, uncertainty about the effectiveness of treatment in reducing recidivism is not uncommon." Why is there a sense of uncertainty over the effectiveness of treatment? What are the factors that contribute to this sense of uncertainty? I believe that a review of the current treatment and rehabilitation programs most popularly used can yield answers on this in relation to the patterns that make experts as ...