“Criminological Perspective on Juvenile Sex Offender Policy”

The title of this post is the title of this short new article authored by Franklin Zimring available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Persons under 18 are in the very early years of sexual maturity and lack both experience and perspective.  When juveniles commit sexual offenses, the behavior is typically not violent and most often involves conduct only referred to authorities because of an age difference between the offender and the victim.  Rates of future sexual offending in later years are quite low for most juvenile sex offenders and on current data the presence or absence of a juvenile sex offense is not a significant predictor of sexual offending in young adulthood.  Under these circumstances, requiring registration and public notification of juvenile sex offenders is very poor crime control policy as well as gross injustice to the juvenile offender.