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Juvenile Sexual Offenders

In recent years, more attention is being paid to juvenile sex offenders despite lower rates of violent crime committed by juveniles (Puzzanchera, 2019). The media portrayal of the juvenile sex offender has included children, adolescents, girls, boys, healthy children, and children with physical and emotional disabilities. The public’s concern about juvenile sex offenders has waxed and waned in proportion to the number and heinousness of sex crimes reported during a given time period. Likewise, the public’s attitude toward the juvenile sex offender has vacillated between attempts to understand, treat, and rehabilitate the offender, and a wish to incarcerate and punish the youthful offender. In this chapter, we explore the phenomenon of the juvenile sex offender from three perspectives. We realize that this is a limited picture of a multidimensional phenomenon and that there are other areas worthy of an in-depth discussion. We have chosen to focus on the epidemiology of juvenile sex offenders, the recidivism potential of offenders, and the current available treatment models because these areas of interest seem to distinguish the juvenile offender from the adult. We leave the discussion of the developmental, biological, psychodynamic, and sociocultural factors that lead to juvenile sexual offending to others.