A comprehensive literature review indicated that there is a dearth of research focusing on female youth sex offenders and even less is known about the perceptions of female youth sex offenders regarding the factors that contributed to their offending. This study explores the perceptions of female youth sex offenders regarding their reasons for offending. The female youth sex offenders in this study indicated that various factors as discussed below contributed to their offending. The empirical findings of this study confirmed that female youth sex offenders are of the opinion that certain problems within their families possibly contributed to their offending behaviour. Some of these characteristics include factors such as divorce, poor parenting skills, domestic violence, substance abuse and lack of basic care and safety, just to mention a few. Female youth sex offenders’ lack of assertiveness, low self-esteem and identity issues were other factors that most probably contributed to their sexual offending. When taking into account that the majority of the participants’ parents were unemployed, poverty was another factor that most likely played a contributory role. Due to poverty in the household some of these youth were forced to relocate to Girls’ Homes, change schools or drop out of school. In order to curb female youth sex offending one would need to address these factors in a multidisciplinary and holistic manner. This study reports an in-depth qualitative understanding of the perceptions of female youth sex offenders regarding factors that contributed to their offending. In addition the last objective of this study will be the formulation of recommendations to address female youth sex offending more effectively. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Social Work and Criminology / Unrestricted

In this study, we examined the extent to which global warming management is currently integrated into the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), the central legal framework for water management in the EU. We focused on the Elbe River Basin District and how global warming is addressed in its water management. We used the social–ecological systems (SES) approach as our theoretical framework, representing an eminent analytical frame of biosphere-based sustainability science. In our study, we analysed core characteristics of SES in the context of global warming to evaluate the effectiveness of current water management in the Elbe River basin concerning long-term changing climate conditions. To determine to what extent each SES feature is considered in the Elbe water management, we applied a scale of 1 to 5. Our results show that the SES feature “scale and openness” is best addressed (score 4.0) by the Elbe River basin management, followed by “context dependency” (score 3.9); however, “non-linearity, uncertainty, unpredictability” (score 3.2), “self-organisation and adaptability” (score 3.1), and “dynamics” (score 3.0) have only moderate impacts. SES features can only be considered comprehensively if global warming is accounted for in an integrated way at a European level. In order to ensure effective implementation, explicit regulations and legally binding obligations are most likely required.