Family Stress Levels of Identified Juvenile Sexual Offenders

An important question facing the juvenile justice system is the appropriate placement of adolescents who are adjudicated for a sexual offense. In the face of increasing questions about the advisability of institutionalization, there is understandable pressure to determine which juveniles can be successfully managed and treated in the community. The decision about whether they can be safely returned home can obviously have important consequences for the adolescent, for the rest of the family, or for society. Although information about the perpetrator’s family can be weighted in the decision, very little systematic information about the characteristics of these families is available. For example, family stress level, a potential etiological factor and predictor of negative outcome, has not been examined in this population. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the stress level of parents of identified juvenile sexual perpetrators and compare it to normative values. Differences between families of offenders with intrafamilial versus extrafamilial victims will also be explored.