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The juvenile justice system was founded on the beliefs that youth were inherently different from adults, both in the crimes they committed and how they were treated within society, and thus deserved to be punished differently. The court’s job was to act as a sort of parent and always in the best interest of the child. Within this empathetic system, there has always been a fundamental misunderstanding of youth who commit sexual offenses and today those misunderstandings are incredibly detrimental to adjudicated youth and society at large. We believe that these youth are dangerous predators, that they will continue to offend throughout adulthood, and that we need to punish them punitively and for long periods of time. Research shows that all of these assumptions are false and that these youth are deserving of rehabilitation and capable of change. Through an analysis of the literature on the history of the juvenile justice system, the characteristics and recidivism rates of youth who commit sexual offenses, and the implications of treatment, incarceration, and sex offender registration, the author discusses the various ways we have failed to meet the goals of the juvenile justice system and reduce sexual crimes. Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses 3 History The juvenile justice system was created in the late 19 century in conjunction with other Progressive Era reforms, which also included child labor laws, mandatory education, and school lunches. Attitudes were changing in regards to children who committed crimes, and advocates at the time understood that treating young people as adult criminals would hinder their development and ultimately worsen society. They championed the idea that wayward children did not need to be punished, but cared for. The court began as a stand-in guardian of the child, focusing on rehabilitative capabilities of youth (McCord, Spatz Widom, & Crowell, 2001). The court’s job was to act in the best interest of the child (Siegel & Senna, 2000). Keeping court records confidential was also of utmost importance, as people understood the need to protect the child from social stigma and isolation. The early years of the juvenile justice system felt the tension of striking a balance between accountability for crimes, and the knowledge that youth have the ability to change and develop positively if we let them (McCord, Spatz Widom, & Crowell, 2001). Whether or not juvenile courts throughout history have met their founders’ goals is debatable, but it is clear that the ways we treat many youth involved in the justice system today are directly counter to the original intent of the system. These contradictions are especially clear when we examine the juvenile justice system’s treatment of youth who commit sexual offenses. Despite children not having the same rights or agency as adults, when they commit crimes, we tend to view them as little adults, requiring punishment just as severe as those over eighteen. Despite having a separate system to try juveniles who commit crimes, many youth are still tried as adults, housed in correctional facilities, and given sentences whose consequences stay with these youth for the rest of their lives. When national crime rates, including those Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses 4 committed by juveniles rose, policymakers and practitioners within the juvenile justice and correctional systems began to believe that more punitive measures were necessary when dealing with this new generation of violent, predatory youth. In the 1980s and 1990s, when national crime rates rose, the public made it clear to politicians that there was no way to win votes without appearing tough on crime. A war was waged on drugs, or more specifically, drug users, and any hope of prioritizing rehabilitation and treatment above filling prison beds went out the door (Alexander, 2010). This is when the image of the “superpredator” came into public consciousness. A superpredator was a young, usually non-white, male criminal who was inherently deviant and would become a dangerous, lifelong criminal (Linde, 2011). This young person was likely in a gang and in no way wanted out of their life of crime (McElrath-Bey, 2014). Excessive media attention and public acceptance of the superpredator narrative coupled with a lack of research on youth who commit sexual offenses led to harsher sentences and more youth being waived to and tried in adult court. But this trend was nothing new to the history of criminal justice. How we have dealt with sexual offenses in the past has typically been based on horrific single cases, as opposed to research. There are two points within the last hundred years which marked distinctive turning points in sex crime legislation. Up until the 1940s, sexual offending was thought of as a mental health issue, and one that would last throughout one’s life. It was treated with lifelong institutionalization and forced sterilization. Then in the late 1930s and mid 1940s, two separate incidents changed public perception. First, the stories of the crimes of Albert Fish, a serial killer and sexual offender against children, came to light. The public was rightfully disgusted and terrified. Then, the burgeoning eugenics movement in the United States fell out of favor as its association with Nazism grew after World War II, therefore forced Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses 5 sterilization as a punishment for criminals became illegal. As a result of these two events, much more attention was paid to sexual offending by forensic psychologists and the idea of the “sexual psychopath” was born. It was thought that sexual offending was lifelong, violent, dangerous to the community, but that those who engaged in it could not control their impulses and needed to be treated in an institution as opposed to incarcerated (Letourneau & Caldwell, 2013). Fears about sexual offending adults calmed down over the next several decades, and sexual offending in youth was largely ignored (Reiss, 1960). For a while, courts were only concerned with sexual deviancy committed by female teenagers because it was necessary to keep their unholy desires in check. Sexual offenses committed by young boys were rarely adjudicated, and treatment and deinstitutionalization was the norm (Reiss, 1960). Then in the 1980s and 1990s, a string of “stranger danger” cases and the superpredator image terrified the public and shaped sex offender legislation and registration as we know it today (Letourneau & Cladwell, 2013). The phenomenon of the chronic adult sexual abuser began to be understood, and the assumptions made about that population were placed on youth who committed sexual crimes (Lussier, Corrado, McCuish, 2016). Punitive measures across the board became the public’s preferred method for dealing with young criminals (Zimring & Allen, 2009). During the 1990s, every state added punitive laws toward sex offending that blurred the lines between youth and adults (McCord, Spatz Widom, & Crowell, 2001). The numbers of youth incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities skyrocketed, waivers to adult court increased, and certain youth were added to sex offender registries (Siegel & Senna, 2000) (Becker & Hicks, 2003). People believed that youth who committed sexual offenses were no different from adult offenders and would undoubtedly grow up to be lifelong predators. It seems that this belief, that all sex offenders are the same, was held by practitioners not because research showed this to be true, but because Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses 6 there simply was no research. Clinicians working off of this assumption placed juveniles in the same treatment programs as adults. These populations being served together simply fueled the idea that they were the same (Letourneau & Miner, 2008). It was a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of practitioners, not the youth themselves. In the beginning of the juvenile justice system, sex crimes were not prosecuted with lengthy and retaliatory sentences, not because the crimes were not serious but because the youth did not have deviant pathologies that required intensive treatment (Zimring & Allen, 2009). Research today shows that this is still very much the case. Today, there is a lot of evidence showing that youth who commit sexual offenses have very low recidivism rates and do not pose a threat to their communities. Because youth do not possess the same inclination towards chronic offending that adults do, they should not be adjudicated and punished as such. And despite the lowest national crime rate in decades, the idea of persistency of juvenile deviancy, violence, and crime still persists (FBI, 2016). Children are placed on sex offender registries for life. Young teenagers are incarcerated with grown men, despite evidence showing their strong ability to change. However, just because this data is available does not mean the majority of the public has access to it. This means that long held, damaging stereotypes are still held by most voters. Voters and politicians have the power to change the lives of youth involved in the juvenile justice system, which is why it is important that the people with this power have an accurate knowledge of the populations they impact and how their decisions have detrimental implications. Youth involved in the justice system, even those who commit sexual offenses, are still part of our communities and we have a responsibility as a society to not forget about them and their needs after they have committed a crime. Researchers and practitioners who actually work within the juvenile justice system acknowledge the fact that we look back on our criminal justice system’s Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses 7 history as archaic and inhumane. It is likely that we will look back on this time right now, how we treat youth, and be ashamed of ourselves (Abrams & Anderson-Nathe, 2012). Population Characteristics: Perceived and Real As we have seen in recent years, more attention is bein

Youth Who Commit Sexual Offenses: Tensions Between Public Perception, Legislative Barriers, and Research Findings