POLICE SCIENCE,, 2 page Criteak - Essay Example

Child Sex Offenders Victim Of The Injustice By Adults Maggie Jones’s article, “How Can You Distinguish A Budding Pedophile From AKid With Real Boundary Problems?” gives an in depth look at the dilemma of young children who are declared sex offenders for the sex crimes they commit and whose profile is posted on the internet for open social access. Jones has done her best to get the true picture of all the aspects that are related to the legal system handling the juvenile sex offenders.

From the article, it becomes clear that the real prevention of sexual offense is possible if the family environment is strong, harmonious and nourishing. However, sadly, not every child come from happy home and this somehow makes them indulge in anti-social activities.The article tries to probe the rightness of the legal system where the profiles of the children as young as ten year old are published on the internet. The profile gives personal information about them and hence completely hurt the chances of those children becoming a healthy part of the society.

The example of Johnnie, an eighth grade student, getting bullied at school by the students who found out his profile on the internet, is a devastating case of things going wrong for a child who is trying to become a good citizen. The fact that Johnnie was only eleven when he committed sex offense makes the reader wonder if he deserved to be on the internet profile list. The article has also researched the chances of the child sex offenders turning out to be adult offenders later in the future.

Jones found that 90% of the children committing child offense do not become adult offenders. This makes the reader think twice before labeling a child an offender for a lifetime. The different therapies that the children who commit offense have to go through become meaningless if the society does not make efforts to help them and give them a second chance. Johnnie tried to end his life twice as he was not able to tolerate the verbal abuse and torture for an offense that he committed when he was eleven.

By giving Johnnie’s example, Jones has shown that the legal system is not doing justice to those children who need a second chance at leading a healthy and happy life. Moreover Jones has not only focused on the problem of children who commit sex offense but also has focused on the solution. She has discussed various tools and therapies used to prevent the relapse of the sexual offense in the children. However, by mentioning the inadequacies of the tools like Psychodrama, penile plethysmography and polygraph tests, she has drawn the reader’s attention towards the fault that lie with the rehabilitation methods.

The type of therapy that is proving promising is Multisystemic therapy typically, which focuses on the bonding of a child with parent. The success of Multisystemic therapy makes us to think about the reasons these children commit crime. The article says that most of the children who commit sex offense are victims themselves, who try to re-enact the experience. 90% of the time, the children are offended by people who they know.

This leaves us to understand that what needs to be corrected is the environment and the security at home. Moreover, the question is, should the acts, which in a language of an adult can be called ‘stupid’, that you commit at the tender age of ten and eleven, even be considered crime? How can the adults expect a child to know that what he/she is doing is inappropriate? When the child is being sexually abused, and that too by a family friend or a relative, then he sees that no one is stopping this from happening.

What kind of example are we setting for children by doing this? Children behave the way adults behave. Children who experience the sexual act are the children who commit the offence. Otherwise, how are they suppose to know what it means to touch a vagina or to lick the penis? Adults in the society needs to do some serious thinking. Children are the responsibilities of home, of parents and family. Their protection and nourishment is the responsibility of parents.

Leaving children at the hands of legal system saying that “I thought it will teach him a lesson”, as was said by mother of one of the 11-year-old sex offender, shows how irrational and irresponsible adults are becoming. The system needs to abolish the practice of publishing their profile as from the article it is clear that even if it a child who commits the sex offense, the one who is responsible for it is the adult who abuses him or the environment at home which makes him to indulge in anti-social elements of life.

Children can never be criminal. By calling them criminal, we are forcing them to become criminal. Maggie Jones’s article makes us feel deeply for the children who are being punished for the acts that they commit when they don’t even have a clue of what it is going to result in. However, the article has tried to look at many issues at one time. It should have focused more on the children between the age group of 10-13.

The inclusion of children between 14-17 has somehow weaken the power of the article. Also, what needed was more in depth probe of the role of the family in this issue. This would have given a true picture of the reality and would have made the article a ‘complete’ article.