The inclusion of crime scene behavior in actuarial risk assessment so far is insufficient, unsystematic, and neglecting factors theoretically relevant to sexual recidivism. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to develop a brief actuarial risk scale based on crime scene characteristics. The development sample consisted of data (police databases, paper records, and the National Convictio...

Most interest in violence and gender has focused on certain types of victimization such as sex offenses and relational aggression. This study examined gender patterns across numerous forms of youth victimization. The data are from the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV), a nationally representative U.S. sample of 4,549 children ages 1 month to 17 years obtained through ...

Understanding factors that affect the severity of a juvenile-stranger sexual assault has implications for crime prevention, and potentially, the assessment and treatment of juvenile sex offenders. This study investigated how victim characteristics and the number of suspects affected the use of physical violence and weapons and the occurrence of penetration in 495 allegations of sexual assault c...

Literature on risk factors for recidivism among juveniles who have sexually offended (JSOs) is limited. In addition, there have been no studies published concerning protective factors among this population. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of risk and protective factors to sexual and nonsexual recidivism among a sample of 193 male JSOs (mean age = 15.26). Youths were fo...

This study compares the recidivism patterns of a cohort of 249 juvenile sexual offenders and 1,780 non-sexual offending delinquents who were released from secured custody over a two and one half year period. The prevalence of sex offenders with new sexual offense charges during the 5 year follow-up period was 6.8%, compared to 5.7% for the non-sexual offenders, a non-significant difference. Juv...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prevalence of mental disorders in (subgroups of) juvenile suspects who sexually offended (JSOs), and its relation with criminal re-referrals five to eight years later. METHODS A sample of 106 JSOs (mean age 15.0 ± 1.5 years) referred to the Dutch Child Protection Board between May 2003 and December 2006 was classified into JSOs with child victims (N = 19), solo JS...

Despite decades of research on the adverse consequences of stereotyping and discrimination for many stigmatized groups, little is known about how people with pedophilia perceive and react to stigma. In this article, we present a framework that outlines how stigma-related stress might negatively affect emotional and social areas of functioning, cognitive distortions, and the motivation to pursue...

Abstract We exploit variations in the timing of decriminalization same-sex sexual intercourse across US states to estimate impact these law changes on crime through difference-in-differences and event study models. provide first evidence that sodomy repeals led a decline number arrests for disorderly conduct, prostitution, other sex offenses. Moreover, line with hypothesis enhanced mental healt...

Few studies have longitudinally investigated the criminal profiles of violent juvenile sex and violent juvenile non-sex offenders. To make up for this lack, this study used police records of juveniles to determine the nature of the criminal profiles of violent sex offenders (n = 226) and violent non-sex offenders (n = 4,130). All offenders committed their first offense in 1996 and were followed...

Public policy is unsettled with regard to juvenile status offenders--children who are subject to juvenile court jurisdiction for noncriminal behavior such as running away from home, incorrigibility, truancy, and curfew violation. In 1974, the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act initiated a national policy of status offender "deinstitutionalization," supporting the developmen...