Sexuality, Adolescence and the Criminal Law

SUMMARY The provisions in the German Criminal Code protecting sexual self-determinationeven after several penal law reforms-are still criminologically not yet coherently structured and carry some contradictions. Recent research implies that in the section of the German Criminal Code establishing sexual offences three very divergent forms of deviant behavior are lumped together in an undifferentiated way: violent offences, infractions of moral norms and commercialization of sexuality (the latter in most cases in the form of organised crime). Some offences lack empirical justification in the sense of a concept of protection, for example due to the fact that damage caused to victims is not proven. In addition the establishment of age limits turns out as a difficult task, i.e., when consensual (love) relations of adolescents and of young adults are concerned. International efforts to approximate (sexual) offences legislation carry the risk that reasoned, criminologically analysed and empirically justified regulations are sacrificed to populistic diffused mainstream-thinking.