Criminal careers for different juvenile sex offender subgroups

Recidivism by juvenile sexual offenders (JSO) has attracted a lot of attention in international research over the last two decades. Most studies show that JSO have low base rates of sexual recidivism: a weighted average percentage of between 10 and 13% sexual recidivism is found. Policymakers also seem to believe that juvenile sex offenders, particularly those who have offended against children, are a high risk group, the reason why there are special registration laws for JSO in different countries. In the Netherlands, the country where the study described in this chapter was conducted, JSO are registered in order to ban them for life from working with children or people who are otherwise dependent. The chapter describes the criminal careers of juvenile sex offenders, from adolescence into adulthood. It compares these careers for different subgroups: child abusers, peer abusers, and group offenders. It also investigates crime mix in these criminal careers.