Overview

This book critically examines socio-political constructions of risk related to sexual offending behaviour by and among children and young people and charts the rise of harmful sexual or exploitative behaviour among peers, drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks and primary research. Discussion of these behaviours is exhibited against a backdrop of the premature cultural sexualisation of contemporary childhood, which challenges traditional conceptions of childhood, victimhood and gendered sexual identities more broadly. It examines the complexities of peer-based sexual behaviours in a range of settings, including within organisational contexts such as schools and care homes, within families and peer-based relationships, as well as online contexts including sexting and cyberbullying. It draws out the myriad legal, practical and policy challenges of negotiating the boundaries between normal/experimental, risky/problematic and harmful sexual behaviour, and in particular the demarcation between coercion and consent, both for professionals as well as children and young people themselves.

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9781107144842

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Reviews

'Children as Risk is a superb monograph that I would recommend to others without hesitation. Laura Bainbridge, The British Journal of Criminology 'Children as Risk is a superb monograph that I would recommend to others without hesitation. Laura Bainbridge, The British Journal of Criminology

'... Children as 'Risk' is a superb monograph that I would recommend to others without hesitation. Indeed, while ostensibly produced for an (interdisciplinary) academic audience, I am convinced that practitioners and public policy-makers alike will benefit from reading McAlinden's analysis ...' Laura Bainbridge, The British Journal of Criminology

Author Information

Anne-Marie McAlinden is a Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Queen's University Belfast. She is an internationally recognised expert on sexual offending against children and the author/editor of over fifty publications, including two previous sole-authored monographs, the first of which, The Shaming of Sexual Offenders (2007), was awarded the British Journal of Criminology Book Prize 2008. She has been Principal Investigator on a number of ESRC funded projects including a recently completed three-year study on 'Sex Offender Desistance'; and currently 'Apologies, Abuses and Dealing with the Past', where one of the case studies is institutional child abuse.

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