An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending

By Franklin E. Zimring and Francis A. Allen

An American Travesty is the first scholarly book in half a century to analyze the justice system’s response to sexual misconduct by children and adolescents in the United States. Writing with a refreshing dose of common sense, Franklin E. Zimring discusses our society's failure to consider the developmental status of adolescent sex offenders. Too often, he argues, the American legal system ignores age and developmental status when adjudicating young sexual offenders, in many cases responding as they would to an adult.

“An opinionated, articulate, and forceful critique of current politics and practices. . . . I would recommend this book for anyone interested in rethinking the fundamental questions of how our courts and systems should respond to these cases.”—Law and Politics Book Review

“One of the most important new books in the field of juvenile justice. . . . Zimring offers a thoughtful, research-based analysis of what went wrong with legal policy development.”—Barry Krisberg, President, National Council on Crime and Delinquency

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9780226983592

Franklin E. Zimring

Franklin E. Zimring is the William G. Simon Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or coauthor of many books on topics including deterrence, the changing legal world of adolescence, capital punishment, the scale of imprisonment, and drug control. Such books include The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment (voted a Book of the Year by The Economist), American Youth Violence, and A Century of Juvenile Justice.

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