Studies have shown that recidivism rates among child sexual offenders are very high. Therefore, the number of children victimized by paedophiles is also very high. In most of the cases, offenders committing these crimes suffer from paraphilia -categorized as a mental disorder by the psychological sciences. Thus, imprisonment for this category of child abusers obviously is not the answer. That's why a lot of states have tried to incorporate in their legislations a medical treatment useful to prevent recidivism of paedophiles and to protect the children. Chemical castration is merely a type of hormone therapy that takes away the offender's sexual desire. There can be some unpleasant side effects, but they are mostly reversible and this paper tries to argue that this procedure is humane and necessary to prevent child molesters. The first part of this paper examines paedophilia, chemical castration procedure and will show data from studies made mostly in USA to see the efficiency of this procedure. The second part of this paper examines the growing trend by legislators towards favoring castration as a sentencing alternative and explains the reasons for this trend. This part finds that this trend is a necessary response to a failing criminal justice system.
The paper is composed of two parts. The first part covers juvenile delinquency with all its characteristics. When analyzing the delinquency, we gave a special place to the socio-pathological phenomena which is more and more present and the rate is higher from year to year. Social pathology is a huge issue that requires special commitment, first, for its detection and then prevention. Within the delinquency, we also cover the most common crimes committed by juveniles.
In the second part of this paper, the authors deal in more details with a specific form of crime which can also be committed by juveniles: child sexual abuse and pedophilia. First, the difference between child sexual abuse and pedophilia will be discussed, a difference that is of particular importance in cases where minors are abusers. Furthermore, the main characteristics of cases when both perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse are minors will be addressed. Although these criminal offenses are rarer in practice unlike the criminal offenses and deviant behaviors treated in the first part, however, knowing the main characteristics and specifics of such cases is of particular importance for the legal-criminal treatment of the perpetrators of these criminal offenses.
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