Alternatives To Incarceration Essay

Alternatives to Incarceration and Sex Offender Registry There are several different alternatives to incarceration for juvenile sex offenders. The most helpful is therapy. More often than not, a juvenile who commits a sexual offense does not understand that what they did was wrong, and they do not understand the consequences. Instead of being sent to prison, they should be sent to court mandated counseling to determine whether the child’s intent was innocent or malicious. That brings about the next alternative. Looking at juvenile sexual offense on a case by case basis. Another alternative is to do probation or community corrections (“Alternatives to Incarceration,” 2011). This alternative would include meeting regularly with a probation

There are far too few resources being devoted to the prevention of sexual offenses perpetrated by juveniles. This is simply due to the fact that many adults are too uncomfortable with talking about what sex is and what it means to give and receive consent. Juveniles are being labeled as sex offenders at as young an age as ten. That is not to say that there are juvenile sex offenders in the United States who are innocent children. There are juveniles who perpetrate violent rapes against their peers as well as against those who are younger and weaker than them. The importance of not labeling juveniles as sex offenders merely because of misunderstandings cannot be emphasized enough. The implications this label has on individuals for the rest of their lives is hard to comprehend. When a juvenile is placed on the sex offender registry, the age of their victim does not change, but their current age always gets updated. Like the example given earlier in this essay, the boy, Jim T., who was originally charged with playing doctor. He went from being seen as a child misbehaving to a grown man molesting a six-year-old