Description of adolescent sex offenders and their origin:
Adolescent sex offenders are children or teens who commit a forcible or non-forcible sex offense. The law enforcement group classifies sex offenses as forcible rape, such as fondling, sexual assault, sodomy, and rape. In the non-forcible rape, the victim cannot give her consent, and it includes statutory rape, and incest. The early theories indicate that an event/incident causes an impact to the emotional stability of the youth. This scenario leads to anger, which eventually results to fantasies and thoughts of retaliation. Then, the youth thinks of overpowering another person thus, resulting to an assault. Discussions with the offenders reveal that they have problems in the family and at school. The risk is that at any time when an intriguing thought or feeling dominates a young one, it triggers an offending behavior. According to the information from the Center for Sex Offender Management, one of the common traits of adolescent sex offenders is mental illness. They also have difficulties in controlling their judgment at an impulse. Many of them suffer from learning disabilities and inefficiency in academics. Most of the researchers attribute the offenders’ behavior to the “learning theory” as the origin of this offense. This theory points to several factors that lead to abusive behavior of children, such as sexual victimization, family violence, exposure to aggressive incidents, increase of sexual arousal, substance abuse, and exposure to pornography and sexual advertising. These adolescent sex offenders either commit sexual abuse to children, or take peers and adults as their victims. The young sex offenders usually have a feeling of social withdrawal and isolation. The irony is that the public treats most of them as adults and calls them pedophiles or predators. However, although they treat these offenders as adults, the law penalizes them as adolescents in many cases and not as adults. Therefore, their penalties are lighter than the ones imposed by the courts on adult offenders (Finkelhor et al, 2009).
The risk factors associated with adolescent sex offenders:
The risk factors that result to delinquency include genetic or biological, quality of parenting, peer group associations, skill deficits, and school involvement. The major reason for preventing delinquency is to stop the youth from engaging in a delinquent behavior. If there are no programs to address this problem, the youth would encounter risks, such as drug use and dependency, incarceration, injury, school drop-out, adult criminality, and early pregnancy of victims. If those who have concern over the youth save them from delinquency, they also save them from having wasted lives. It is a cycle that most of the hardened criminals start their criminal career as juveniles. If the society prevents delinquency, the onset of criminal careers as these adolescents grow would stop. It thus reduces the burden of having a cycle of adult criminals and their victims. The society would be free from having delinquents and adult criminals who take a heavy toll on the victims and taxpayers both financially and emotionally. Description of juveniles who are affected by the criminal problem:
The juveniles usually isolate from the crowd and think deeply without doing anything until an intriguing idea comes to his mind. At this point, he does not think of the idea as evil, but something that is challenging, and would give him the chance to practice his skill. At times, he does not have the chance to prove his worth to his parents or to the society because he has deficiencies on skills and academics. This adolescent is also a victim of the complexities of life at an early age because of his constant exposure to sexual advertisements, pornographic materials and movies, school bullying, troublesome families, and other problems that deter his growth.
Possible prevention and intervention ideas for adolescent sex offenders –
Some of the prevention and intervention ideas include the Wraparound strategy, Functional Family Therapy, Multi-systemic Therapy, and the Cognitive-Behavior Treatment. The Wraparound strategy focuses on surrounding the youth with various community services to prevent confining them into a residential or institutional placement. A case manager assumes the roles of mentoring, supporting, and supervising the young offenders. The Functional Family Therapy deals with delinquency and the dynamics within the family unit. The goal is to boost the cooperation of the parents or caregivers in providing adequate discipline, support, structure and limits to the youth. Under the Multi-systemic Therapy, a family-based approach addresses several factors associated with delinquency, such as family problems, peers and community influences, individual isolation, and school involvement. This intervention program occurs at home, school, and the community. The Cognitive-Behavior Treatment program significantly reduces the rate of recidivism among the youth. In this case, the youth takes full responsibility for sex offending and other behavioral problems (Greenwood and Slowikowski, 2009).
Research support for the effectiveness of the proposed prevention/intervention ideas:
In many situations, when prevention and intervention programs place the adolescents into one group together with other delinquent peers, the results are poorer than what the stakeholders expect and the rate of recidivism or repetition is high. The tendency is that the teens who stay together with delinquent peers continue having troubles overtime. This “deviancy training” is so strong that it breaks the positive effect of the interventions.
Since aggregating the youth with other delinquents has a negative impact, many professionals do not favor this program regardless of adopting a residential or community setting. According to studies, the most successful programs focus on family interactions and providing skills to those who train and supervise the child. Moreover, the rates of recidivism become low in these types of programs (Greenwood and Slowikowski, 2009).
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References:
Greenwood, Peter and Slowikowski, Jeff. (Feb. 2009). Prevention and Intervention Programs for
Juvenile Offenders. Pdf. Princeton University.
Retrieved from: http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/
publications/docs/18_02_09.pdf
Finkelhor, David et al. (Dec. 2009). Juveniles Who Commit Sex Offenses Against Minors. US
Dept. of Justice.
Retrieved from: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf
