Juvenile Sex Offenders Essay

Juvenile offenders often have an unstable or dysfunctional living situation or display psychological problems. For this reason, psychological evaluations are an essential part of juvenile court. A study done by Baglivio (2009) suggested that psychologists, and psychiatrists regularly use psychological evaluations of juvenile offenders to determine the recidivism of the individual. To reduce the risk of recidivism, juvenile court provides the offender with the necessary treatments needed, as determined through the psychological evaluation conducted by the health care expert.
Juvenile court is geared toward rehabilitation of the offender, so courts often request psychological evaluations to assist in legal decisions (Viljoen, McLachlan, & Vincent, 2010). Self- report psychological evaluations such as the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory

Gretton et al., stated that high PCL-R scores predicted the chances of juvenile sex offenders to reoffend in general offences, violent offences, and sexual offences to a fairly high degree. In a similar study conducted by Viljoen, McLachlan, and Vincent (2010), the Hare Psychopathic Checklist: Youth Version (PCL-YV), was also determined to be helpful in assessing the likelihood of reoffending in juveniles and adolescents, but due to ethical concerns, testers should refrain from labeling juveniles as psychopaths if this assessment is administered. Clinicians however, regularly use the PCL-YV as a tool in assessing juvenile risk. It was also determined that clinicians nearly always used a risk assessment for any type of evaluation related to the disposition, sex offender registration, rehabilitation, and transfer of juveniles to criminal court (Viljoen, McLachlan, & Vincent,