The concept of the best interests of the child pervades legislation to do with children and guidelines for psychological assessment. In this paper, we critically evaluate the way that courts and psychologists employ this concept of the best interests of the child. Difficulties in operationalising the concept are explored. Cultural biases are identified. Procedures to minimise individual and cultural biases and to make the process more transparent are proposed.

The present paper reviews the empirical psychological literature on moral development to examine the hypothesis that children today are more advanced in their moral reasoning than their earlier counterparts. The review briefly examines the classic research on how children understand morality and when they understand the short- and long-term consequences of their behaviour. It then examines replication studies in the moral development literature. The review concludes that there is no evidence for or against the proposition that today’s children are more advanced in their moral reasoning than their earlier counterparts, as there is a distinct lack of reliable replication studies that could answer the question one way or another.

This paper briefly describes four essential elements of interviews involving children, where the primary goal is to obtain detailed and accurate information about an event (e.g., an alleged incident of sexual abuse). These elements include (a) the establishment of a good rapport with the child, (b) a clear description of the purpose and ground-rules of the interview, (c) objectivity and open-mindness, and (d) effective questioning skills. A rationale for the importance of each of these elements and practical recommendations are offered.

This article provides information about some of the key concepts and principles that define society’s approach to juvenile offenders. These are explicated as models of juvenile justice. The causes of juvenile offending are also elaborated through considering various theories of juvenile delinquency. Next, the prevalence of juvenile crime is addressed followed by an overview of preventative and responsive interventions to reduce juvenile offending. The article makes the case for a systematic approach to assessing risk factors, needs, and strengths. This approach fits well with major threads in the juvenile justice arena. It is also necessary in order to make sound and useful decisions about young offenders.

Although a relationship between child maltreatment and juvenile offending has been documented, little is known about the way in which maltreatment affects the timing and frequency of juvenile offending. Recent work on antisocial behaviour and offending in adolescents suggests that young people exposed to negative childhood experiences are more likely to offend earlier in life and more frequently than those who have not been exposed to such risk factors. The purpose of this study is to explore how one childhood risk factor, being maltreatment, influences the age of onset and frequency of juvenile offending. This study used the records of an Australian birth cohort who are now 18 and who came to the attention of the Department of Families (Queensland) about a child maltreatment matter, a juvenile justice matter, or both. Children who were maltreated were more likely to offend than children without official maltreatment records and were also more likely to offend earlier and more frequently that children who had not been maltreated. This research has important implications for understanding the onset of criminal careers and for the allocation of resources into crime prevention interventions and effective responses to maltreatment.

Characteristics of adolescents who sexually offend, their patterns of their offending behaviour and the defining features of their victims are firmly established in the overseas literature. The research literature in Australia, however, is less developed. This study describes the characteristics of a sample of clients of the Sex Offender Program of the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice and examines patterns of offence behaviours and related descriptions of victims. Adolescents who sexually offend in NSW have backgrounds of low educational attainment and abuse and a range of other social risk factors, and they are most likely to victimise female children. A typology of adolescent sex offenders based on their offending behaviour is offered.