Sexual offenses committed by juveniles are a growing concern for police, courts, and the public. Currently, many courts do not know how to appropriately handle juvenile sex offenders and are relying upon professional opinion or sexual offense risk assessment protocols. Existing risk assessment measures tend to focus on individual level factors (e.g. crime history, personality, attitudes, etc) or microsystem factors (e.g. interactions with parents, performance at school, etc.) and fail to include larger systemic factors such as socioeconomic status and neighborhood. This study looks at risk assessments, socioeconomic status, and distance to possible neighborhood protective and risk factors for 58 youth as they entered a county court system after being adjudicated for a sex offense. One-year follow up data was used to assess the incremental predictive validity of these factors. Results indicate that the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol II (JSOAP II) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) are useful predictors of recidivism, as is the proximity to the nearest church. Socioeconomic status, operationalized as a neighborhood type index, formed via a cluster analysis of several census items, was found to mediate the relationship between the JSOAP II and recidivism, with the risk assessment measure only accurately predicting for one of three neighborhood types.
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