The sexual behaviours of adolescents aged between 14 and 17 years involved with the juvenile justice system in Australia: A community-based survey (original) (raw)
2020, PLoS ONE
Objectives To overcome key knowledge gaps in relation to justice involved and vulnerable young people and their sexual health and to compare this group with their peers from other youth health surveys in Australia to determine the extent of the issues. Methods Young people, aged between 14 and 17 years, who had ever been or were currently involved with the criminal justice system were purposively sampled. The survey was anonymous and delivered using Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI). Results A total of 465 justice involved MeH-JOSH young people, aged between 14 and 17 years, participated in the study: 44% Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) and 37% not attending school. Of the total valid responses, 76% (n = 348) reported having ever had sex, with sexual initiation at a median age of 14 years. We compared these data with their peers in other Australian surveys and found that young people in our study had a higher engagement in sex and start having sex at...
Related papers
Juvenile Sex Offending: Its Prevalence and the Criminal Justice Response
It is not widely appreciated that a considerable proportion of sex offending is perpetrated by other children or adolescents, including members of the victim’s family. This is largely obscured by court data and victim surveys. There is accordingly a danger that the issue of responding appropriately to the sexual offending of juveniles could be lost in general discussions of both youth crime and child sexual abuse. Whilst there is some literature on juvenile sex offending, its focus is generally on offender profiles, explanations for offending and predictors of reoffending. There is a void in the literature when it comes to how juvenile sex offending is dealt with in the criminal justice system. General discussions of both sentencing for sex offences and the criminal justice response to young offenders tend to pay scant attention to the issue. Accordingly, this article aims to fill a gap in the literature by focusing on the prevalence of sexual offending by juveniles and the criminal justice response to it in the wider context of juvenile offending and sex offending in general. The article’s broader aim is to ensure that the issue of juvenile sex offending is not ignored and opportunities for intervention and prevention are not lost.
2020
Background Numerous studies have demonstrated a strong link between child maltreatment and subsequent youth offending, leading to calls for early intervention initiatives. However, there have been few whole-population studies into the dimensions of statutory child maltreatment responses that can inform these programs. The aim of this study was to investigate the sex-specific association between level and timing of child protection system (CPS) contact and youth offending.Methods This retrospective cohort study used linked individual-level records from multiple agencies, for 10,438 Aboriginal children born in the Northern Territory between 1999 and 2006. The outcome measure was the first alleged offence. Key explanatory variables were level (no contact through to out-of-home care) and timing (0-4 years, 5-9 years, or both) of CPS contact. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to estimate cumulative incidence and a flexible parametric survival model to estimate hazard ratios (HR).Results C...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.