The study was conducted at Glenthorne Youth Treatment Centre, a national provision in England for adolescents, many of whom are serious offenders. Fifteen of the 33 subjects were sex offenders, and the remainder committed a variety of other offenses. Subjects listened to the details of four audiotaped fabricated crimes (rape, robbery, arson, and manslaughter) and then verbally completed a previously validated scale of explanations of offending. The subjects also recommended a type of disposition for each offense. No significant difference in causal explanation for the crimes was found between sex offenders and the other offenders, although sex offenders were apparently more treatment-oriented in their preferred means of disposition. Across all subjects there was an interaction between type of crime and explanation which replicated previous research that found explanations of crime among the general population to be crime-specific. This article discusses a contradiction between the attribution of mental instability and punitive disposition for rape in relation to a labeling hypothesis for sex offenders. 2 tables and 22 references