Research Note: An Evaluation of Juvenile Sexual Offender Treatment

Although interest in the treatment of juvenile sexual offenders has increased significantly in recent years, there are still few programs specifically geared toward these youths and few of the existing programs have been evaluated. This article presents an evaluation of one court-based program. The results show that youths handled in the program fare no better than youths processed through normal, nonoffense specific programming. These results suggest that the growth of interventions has proceeded without adequate knowledge of how to identify at-risk youths, the causes of the behavior, and the most appropriate treatment for juvenile sexual offending.