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.

Winner, 2019 Kevin Boyle Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, Irish Association of Law Teachers

'... 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 Source: The British Journal of Criminology