Disentangling Practitioners’ Understandings of Child Sexual Exploitation: The Risks of Assuming Otherwise?

Abstract

This paper reports findings from a qualitative study investigating the efficacy and the effects of a Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) awareness raising intervention with young people. Drawing on in-depth interviews with members of a multi-agency team set up to prevent CSE, we elucidate the way in which practitioners communicate the problem of CSE and how risk registers are deployed to assess the dangerousness of young people’s behaviours. In examining practitioners’ understandings of CSE, we illuminate the ways in which educative interventions in this domain are informed by a confluence of policy guidelines and personal/experiential perceptions. Unravelling the tensions arising between these two frames of interpretation, we illustrate that - despite routine recourse to embedded professional knowledge – underlying moral and cultural assumptions alongside anxieties about childhood sexuality influence practitioners’ understandings of the nature of risk, who is at risk and the context in which risks manifest themselves.

Citation

Weston, S., & Mythen, G. (2021). Disentangling Practitioners’ Understandings of Child Sexual Exploitation: The Risks of Assuming Otherwise?. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 22(4), 618-635. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895821993525

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 14, 2021
• Publication Date: Feb 10, 2021
• Journal: Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Print ISSN: 1748-8958
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: ARTN 1748895821993525
• Pages: 618-635
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895821993525
• Keywords: Child sexual exploitation, childhood sexuality, police interventions, risk prevention, young people
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748895821993525