Juvenile Sex Crimes Recidivism Prior to the late 1970s, a juvenile sex offender was not viewed as a threat to public safety with many experts believing that sexual offenses by young boys was simply part of adolescence. However, during the early 1980s, researchers found in interviews with adult sexual offenders that they began offending during adolescence, leading legislators to focus more attention on youth who commit sexual crimes. Adult Sex Offender Treatments Because there was little data on how to treat youthful offenders, interventions were often the same as those used on adults. It was not considered that juvenile offenses may differ from that of adults or that there may even be differences between youth who commit sexual offenses and
Read more →TRUMP IS RIGHT Breaking News: Cody Cofer Agrees with Donald Trump! Dare I say it? That Donald Trump could possibly be right about even one thing? Well, he is right regarding our nation having a mental health problem not a gun problem. Today, Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “This isn’t a gun problem, this is a mental problem. It’s not a question of laws, it’s really the people.” Trump’s statement comes in response to the Wednesday shootings of two journalists live on television by what many are calling a mentally ill man who later took his own life. Trump says that he is opposed to increasing gun laws but does favor addressing mental health to combat shootings. This approach has
Read more →The war on drugs has a victim. The drug offender. Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s marked the start of skyrocketing rates of incarceration. This was due largely to his unprecedented expansion of the “drug war.” According to Drugpolicy.org, the number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997. The 1980s brought the media’s portrayal of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine called “crack” which lead to widespread public concern over drug use. And remember “Just Say No”? Soon after Reagan took office in in 1981, the First Lady began the popular anti-drug campaign “Just Say No.” That slogan was everywhere and is still engrained in the minds
Read more →African Americans make up about 12 percent of the Texas general population. However, if you look at the percentage of male inmates from ages 20 to 24, you see that African Americans make up 42 percent of that prison population. Something is terribly wrong. Of course, I don’t believe its just one cause, but as a criminal defense lawyer I have to ask, “Is our criminal court system failing this group of our citizens?” I expect when this group is charged with a crime, most often they are represented by court appointed counsel. Some court appointed attorneys are fantastic and fight for their clients; however, some attorneys work simply as cogs in the machinery that conveys these people down to
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