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.

Examines the social, legal and cultural challenges navigating the boundaries of 'normal'-'problematic'-'risky' sexual behaviours among peers.

About the Author
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.

Reviews
'... 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



Book Information
ISBN 9781107144842
Author Anne-Marie McAlinden
Format Hardback
Page Count 372
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 660g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 24mm