Criminal careers of juvenile sex offenders

It is often thought that sex offenders are chronic offenders, who are specialised in sexual offences. In particular, it is assumed that people who start to commit sexual offences at a young age have a sexual or psychological abnormality that causes them to continue sexual offending for a long time. In a certain sense sex offenders are seen as ‘incurable’. In recent years, a growing amount of research from both the Netherlands and abroad has been focused on the criminal careers of juvenile sex offenders. The outcomes of these studies are important for making policy and legislation evidence-based, meaning based on the best available information regarding effectiveness and efficiency.