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Effective treatments for juvenile sexual offenders are needed to reduce the societal impact of sexual crimes. The purpose of this paper is to review the empirical literature on treatments for this clinical population.

The authors searched PsycInfo and MEDLINE (via PubMed) for studies that evaluated outcomes of treatments with juvenile sexual offenders.

There are a small but growing number of treatment studies (n=10) with juvenile sexual offenders, and all of these studies evaluated cognitive-behavioral therapy or multisystemic therapy for problem sexual behaviors. The results of these studies are promising, although conclusions about treatment effectiveness have been frequently limited by methodological problems.

The authors provide recommendations for treatment providers and policymakers to consider in their decisions about interventions for juvenile sexual offenders. Furthermore, the authors offer suggestions for researchers who seek to develop effective interventions targeting this clinical population.

The assessment of risk of recidivism in sexual offenders is fundamental to clinical practice. It is widely accepted that, compared with actuarial measures of risk, unaided clinical judgment has generally been found to be of low reliability. Consequently, the literature has shown a surge in actuarial measures. However, a major difficulty in assessing risk in sex offenders is the low base rate, leading to an increased likelihood of making a false positive predictive error. To overcome this, risk assessment studies are increasingly using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), which displays the relationship between level of risk and decision choice. This note summarises the methodological issues in measuring predictive accuracy in assessing risk of re‐offending in sexual offenders, and identifies from the literature both static and dynamic risk factors associated with sexual offence recidivism.

There has been growing concern among stakeholders about individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and sex offending as research supports an indirect association. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, bring more awareness of the sexuality and deviant/criminal sexual behavior among those with ASD to stakeholders in the criminal justice system (CJS); second, demonstrate that much of the deviant or sexual offending behavior exhibited among those with ASD is often a manifestation of their ASD symptoms and not malice; and third, demonstrate the necessity to address specific needs of individuals with ASD who enter the CJS due to criminal sexual behavior.

This paper provides an overview of the ASD symptomology, including the diagnostic changes, a review of the literature on ASD and sexuality, which includes deviant sexual behavior and sexual offending.

The author linked examples of deviant or sexual behavior in the research literature to the ASD symptomology and described how the symptomology explains such behavior.

Sexual offending among those with ASD has received little research outside the mental health field. This review is of particular importance to those in the CJS unfamiliar with ASD, as they should handle them differently with regard to formal interviewing, measures of competency, capacity, and sentencing.