Scared to Death

My Department is making me do a radio interview tomorrow on the topic of juvenile sex offenders.

The whole process started at about 9:30 this morning, when I received a call from a local public broadcasting station, asking to speak to my Sup, who is out of the office this week. I directed the person to the next up in command, and put in a call to my Sup on her cell phone to tell her about it. She loves that shit, and I figured she would welcome the diversion from caring for her sister who just had surgery.

Well, she didn't call me back. Instead, our Public Affairs guy called me and told me I was doing it. I referred him to the District Attorney who files the cases and does all the prosecuting. He indicated that it didn't matter who else I referred him to, I was going to appear and participate in the interview.

Sigh.

So, I called for the pre-interview, as directed. As expected, the radio journalists don't want to know anything about my JOB, they want to know how I can tell if someone is a "budding pedophile." They want to know how many arrests, county-wide, have been made over the past year. They want to know what the "risk" is. They want to know if the number of sexually-abusive youth is increasing. They want to know how the public is kept "informed."

Sigh.

This is going to be the most boring interview ever, and will do absolutely NOTHING to ease the minds of "concerned citizens," because my only answer is:

I don't know. Except for the last question, which nobody really wants the answer to.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not a statistician. I'm not an analyst. I'm a law enforcement officer. And that's all I do. I don't assess risk. I don't know how many arrests are made county-wide regarding sexually-abusive youth, and I don't know how many of those arrests are actually prosecuted. I can't accurately predict who is going to be a life-long sexual predator and who isn't.

And Juvenile Court records are confidential. The Juvenile Court is a rehabilitative Court, not a punishing Court. And you can approach me with all the histrionic "right to know" bullshit that you want, my answer remains the same.

I supervise sexually-abusive youth in the community, and I can tell you that the population, as a whole, is the most compliant, most remorseful, most responsive to treatment, and most misunderstood group of delinquent youth I've ever worked with. I can also tell you that the population is the least likely to do poorly in school, least likely to violate probation, least likely to use drugs, and least likely to re-offend - either sexually or otherwise - than any other youth population I've worked with. I can tell you that the ratio of juvenile sex offenders to other delinquent youth that are being supervised in my county is approximately 600 to 1. I can tell you that rehabilitative efforts directed at this population have a success rate that positively DWARFS any other supervised group of youth.

I can also tell you that the majority of this population suffers from mental health issues, low cognitive functioning, lack of parental supervision and adequate family boundaries, minimal self-efficacy, and even lower self-esteem.

Does any of this information alleviate the impact of their egregious crimes on the victims? Of course not. Nor does it mediate the inevitable seperation of family units that very often accompanies findings of truth in these cases. Likewise, this knowledge does nothing to ease the minds of citizens who fear that their children will be preyed upon by "budding pedophiles."

I am terrified. This is really going to suck.