Com Sex - Investigating the Continuity of Sex Offending: Evidence from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Investigating the Continuity of Sex Offending: Evidence from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort
This study uses data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort to examine the natural history of sex offenders and their involvement in sexual offending through age 26. Several key findings emerged from our effort. First, only one in ten of the 221 male and female juvenile sex offenders had a sex-related offense during the first eight years of adulthood. Second, 92% of all the cohort males with adult sex records had no prior juvenile sex offense. Third, a boy with no sex contacts but five or more total juvenile police contacts was more than twice as likely to commit a sex crime as an adult as a juvenile sex offender with fewer than five total police contacts. Fourth, multinomial logistic regression results demonstrated that being a juvenile sex offender did not significantly increase the likelihood for an individual being an adult sex offender nor did the frequency of juvenile sex offending. In short, the assumptions underpinning current registration and notification laws are fraught with problems and should be re-considered.
Source: works.bepress.com
The Common Thread: Diversion in the Jurisprudence of a Century of Juvenile Justice
A central objective of those who created the juvenile court was to protect young delinquents from the destructive punishments of the criminal justice system. This promotion of juvenile court as a diversion from criminal justice is distinct from more ambitious programs of “child saving” intervention because avoiding harm can be achieved even if no effective crime prevention treatments are available. This essay shows diversion has been an important motive in juvenile justice from the beginning, and the dominant purpose of a separate juvenile court since In Re Gault in 1967. The past thirty years have been the juvenile court’s finest hour as a diversion project; the rate of juvenile incarceration has been stable, while incarceration of young adults has soared.
Source: works.bepress.com
Executions, Deterrence and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities
We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to 1 per million per year until an explosive twentyfold increase in 1994-95 and 96 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95%. Hong Kong, by contrast, has no executions all during the last generation and abolished capital punishment in 1993. Homicide levels and trends are remarkably similar in these two cities over the 35 years after 1973, with neither the surge in Singapore executions nor the more recent steep drop producing any differential impact. By comparing two closely matched places with huge contrasts in actual execution but no differences in homicide trends, we have generated a unique test of the exuberant claims of deterrence that have been produced over the past decade in the U.S.
Source: works.bepress.com