Virginia parents’ knowledge of juvenile sex offense registration laws

This project is the first to analyze what Virginia parents know about sex offense registration laws and how confident they are in their knowledge. Prior literature finds that parents are key agents of socialization and monitoring for children, yet have limited knowledge of certain criminal legal system practices. The sample includes 139 Virginia parents, 50 of whom have a child who has never had contact with the criminal justice system for an alleged offense, 38 of whom have a child who has had contact with the criminal legal system for an alleged sex offense, and 51 of whom have a child who has had contact with the system for an alleged non-sex offense. Results from multinomial logistic regression models reveal that parents whose child has had system contact for a non-sex offense have a higher level of knowledge than parents whose child has not yet had system contact. Further, results from ordinary least squares regression models show that parents in either category of system contact have higher confidence in their knowledge than parents whose child has not yet had system contact. However, no parental group is highly confident in their knowledge.