Moral Reasoning and

Moral development in humans is extremely important, determining the quality of a person’s conduct. In forensic and criminological practice, the moral developmental stage is viewed as one of the factors involved in socio-criminal behavior. In assessing recidivism risk, especially that of young sex offenders, the determination of the moral developmental stage of the offender is essential because, being a dynamic factor, that may change over time, it may play a role in deciding sentencing. Actually, the deter-mination of the stage/level of any offender’s moral development is so important for the delivery of a just verdict and sentence that it should be mandatory. Young sex offenders share with older ones empathy deficits toward their victims, and their social perspective and role-taking are considered to be poor, but still they do not show the full criminal thinking pattern described in offenders in general by Yochelson and Samenow (1977). They do not yet have the typical criminal cognitive style, even though they behave irresponsibly and show lack of self-control. They are immature, and their antisocial behavioral immaturity may be due to their underlying brain immaturity due to a lack of myelinization (see, for example, Restak & Grubin