The news of teenagers and even younger children committing ever more serious and violent crimes continues to shock and baffle. The escalating psychological and social toll of youth crime is being paid by all from victims to offenders to parents and siblings to teachers and to the community as a whole. "Adolescent Reputations and Risk" looks beyond traditional theories to examine, from a solid empirical basis, the motivation and values that make some young people choose antisocial over positive behavior, resulting in potent new insights and possible solutions to this ongoing problem.

Synthesizing 15 years of research with delinquent youth, this volume describes the volatile dynamic of child and adolescent social worlds, emphasizing reputation enhancement and goal-setting as bases underlying deviant behavior. In innovative and accessible terms, "Adolescent Reputations and Risk" addresses delinquency throughout the course of childhood and adolescence, offers the first detailed explanation of delinquency by integrating goal-setting and reputation enhancement theories, provides evidence analyzing deviant trends in goal-setting and reputation enhancement terms among primary and high school students, answers key questions on topics such as impulsivity, drug and inhalant use, early-childhood psychopathy, links between ADHD and aggression, and the psychology of loners and includes current data on interventions for at-risk youth, including family and school methods, cognitive-behavioral therapy, wilderness and boot camp programs, and interactive multimedia strategies.

This volume is an essential resource for clinical child, school, and counseling psychologists; social workers; and allied education and community mental health professionals and practitioners."

Based on a comprehensive study of three counties in Texas, this work examines the idea of differential handling of minority youth offenders. Traditional wisdom indicates that minorities are over-represented in the juvenile justice system due to racism and discrimination within the system itself. The author refutes this logic by challenging current studies and examining the results of the Texas study. The findings suggest that minorities are represented in the juvenile justice system in greater numbers than their majority offender counterparts due to their greater involvement in criminal activity, not to any differential treatment they may receive at crucial decision points within the system. Allegations of racial bias against the juvenile justice system are often supported by the federal government, which suggests that minorities continue to be targeted more frequently for arrest, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment merely because they are persons of color. Drawing on new research, the author addresses racial disparity in the juvenile justice system and contends that previous research suffers methodological and statistical analysis problems, resulting in the mischaracterization of the issue of racial bias. The present study argues that most minority juveniles receive different case outcomes because of the severity of their current offense, and both the length and severity of their prior delinquency careers. Tracy's research ultimately indicates that rather than being discriminatory, the juvenile system is, instead, reacting to a particular type of delinquent using legally permissible guidelines.

Violence of any kind is hard for most people to understand, but crimes against children and crimes committed by children are perhaps the most difficult to comprehend. Child abuse and neglect is a problem with generational effects. Women who were sexually abused in childhood, for example, are more likely than non-abused women to be harsh with their children, withhold affection, or even accept the sexual abuse of their own children by a spouse or lover. Yet children are not always merely the victims of aggression. They also perpetrate violent crimes in the form of bullying, assault, and homicide, as well as crimes on property, such as vandalism. Moffatt addresses the two sides of this cycle of violence, including examples from clinical case studies and treatment options. Moffatt details crimes against children, ranging from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, sexual and physical abuse, neglect, filicide, and infanticide. He addresses aggression committed by children against other people, property, and self, including self-mutilation and suicide. Written for both professional and lay audiences, counselors, teachers, psychologists, law enforcement, medical professionals, and therapists will benefit from the psychological discussions about causes and effects of aggression.

This book explores the factors at the individual, institutional and systemic levels which contribute to children's home residents coming to the attention of the youth justice system, and the consequent implications for policy and practice. Perspectives are drawn from both young people and professionals in the care and youth justice systems.

"Tried as an adult." The phrase rings with increasing frequency through America's courtrooms. In Michigan, an 11-year-old is charged with first-degree homicide in the shooting death of a playmate. A mentally disabled boy in Florida faces armed robbery and extortion charges that could bring 30
years in prison for stealing $2 worth of food. Faith in childhood, and its corollary that separate courts are required for children because they are developmentally different from adults, appears to be vanishing. Almost forgotten in this climate--in which a New York Times' headline boldly announced
that the "Fear of Crime Trumps the Fear of Lost Youth"--is the fact that the juvenile court is one of America's most influential legal inventions.
Long before the crimes of the young became a national preoccupation, Americans struggled with many of the same questions posed by today's aggressive sentencing of minors. What is the legal status of children? Does a particularly horrific crime merit a commensurately severe response, regardless of
the age of the offender? Who belongs in juvenile court, and what is its exact purpose?
In his engaging narrative history of the rise and workings of America's first juvenile court, David S. Tanenhaus explores the fundamental and enduring question of how the law should treat the young. Sifting through almost 3,000 previously unexamined Chicago case files from the early twentieth
century, Tanenhaus reveals how children's advocates slowly built up a separate court system for juveniles, all the while fighting political and legal battles to legitimate this controversial institution. In the process, the juvenile court became a catalyst for thedevelopment of the American welfare
state, the medicalization of child rearing, and the beginnings of innovative community organizing programs.
Today, as America's treatment of juvenile offenders becomes increasingly draconian, the United States, once a leader in the international crusade to secure justice for children, is now in this respect effectively a rogue nation. Harkening back to a more hopeful and nuanced age Juvenile Justice in
the Making provides a valuable historical framework for thinking about youth policy.

Letters from and interviews with twenty-one children and teenagers who broke the law reveal what it is like to be arrested, attend legal proceedings, and be held accountable for one's actions.

This volume brings together a wide range of case studies from across the globe, written by some of the leading scholars in the field, to explore the complex ways in which historical understandings of childhood and juvenile delinquency have been constructed in a global context.

In the lean and anxious years following World War II, Munich society became obsessed with the moral condition of its youth. Initially born of the economic and social disruption of the war years, a preoccupation with juvenile delinquency progressed into a full-blown panic over the hypothetical threat that young men and women posed to postwar stability. As Martin Kalb shows in this fascinating study, constructs like the rowdy young boy and the sexually deviant girl served as proxies for the diffuse fears of adult society, while allowing authorities ranging from local institutions to the U.S. military government to strengthen forms of social control.

This book discusses the relationship between juvenile disability and delinquency, including characteristics of youth with disabilities, how disability relates to delinquency, and its impact during a youth's involvement with the juvenile justice system. The book details the relationship between developmental, cognitive, psychological, and educational disorders-specific conditions including ADHD, bipolar disorder, and autism spectrum disorder-and delinquency in light of both their overrepresentation among youth offenders and the uninformed handling of these youth within the court system. Case studies illustrate the complexities in the processing and placement of these youth offenders, as well as highlight the barriers to delinquent youth receiving appropriate treatment, and their increased risk of reoffending. From this robust knowledge base, the authors make expert recommendations for improving the juvenile justice system at the practice and policy levels to better serve this population. This authoritative volume: * Identifies characteristics and risk factors associated with juvenile delinquency. * Reviews evidence relating developmental, mental health, and other disorders to juvenile offending. * Describes the implications of disabilities in key areas such as offending, risk assessment, competency, and outcomes. * Examines the role of disability law in the juvenile justice system. * Offers guidelines for professionals to use this knowledge in their work. Juvenile Delinquency and Disability is an essential resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in clinical, counseling, and school psychology, criminology and criminal justice, child psychiatry, educational policy and politics, developmental psychology, and social work.

This volume brings together scholars and practitioners specialising in juvenile justice from the US, Europe, alongside scholars from Africa and Asia who are working on human rights issues in developing countries or countries in transition. The book thus presents two types of papers, the first being descriptive and analytical academic papers on whole systems of juvenile justice or certain parts thereof (e.g., aftercare, restorative justice, etc.). These topics are presented as essential for the development of new juvenile justice systems. The second group of papers deal with efforts to promote reform through international activity (PRI, DCI, DIHR), and through efforts to utilise modern theory in national reforms in developing countries (Malawi, Nepal, and Serbia) or in countries experiencing current or recent political and systemic changes or developments (South Africa, Germany, and Poland). The volume is also intended to throw light on recent trends in juvenile crime in various countries, the relationship between actual developments and popular and political perceptions and reactions to such developments, including the efforts to locate effective alternatives to the incarceration of young offenders. At the same time as the search for such alternatives is being intensified through international exchange and experimentation, the amelioration of harsh measures against juvenile law violators is often countered by political and public outcries for security and demonstrative public intervention against misbehavior. A streak of new moralism is clearly discernable as a counteracting force against more humane reform efforts. The volume throws light on developments in the actual parameters of juvenile offending, public and political demands for security and public intervention, and measures to provide interventions which are at the same time compatible with international human rights instruments.

Based on current research supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Zimring determines in American Youth Violence the facts about current and predicted rates of youth violence and analyses policy responses to serious youth violence that have proliferated in the USA. The first part of the book reports on trends in youth violence and demography and evaluates arguments about future trends that have been published recently. Zimring then identifies problems in current youth violence that courts must address and discusses the legal issues involved.

This book presents the first comprehensive analysis of the second International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD-2). An earlier volume, Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond (Springer, 2010) focused mainly on the findings with regard to delinquency, victimization and substance use in each of the individual participating ISRD-2 countries. The Many Faces of Youth Crime is based on analysis of the merged data set and has a number of unique features: The analyses are based on an unusually large number of respondents (about 67,000 7th, 8th and 9th graders) collected by researchers from 31 countries; It includes reports on the characteristics, experiences and behaviour of first and second generation migrant youth from a variety of cultures; It is one of the first large-scale international studies asking 12-16 year olds about their victimization experiences (bullying, assault, robbery, theft); It describes both intriguing differences between young people from different countries and country clusters in the nature and extent of delinquency, victimization and substance use, as well as remarkable cross-national uniformities in delinquency, victimization, and substance use patterns; A careful comparative analysis of the social responses to offending and victimization adds to our limited knowledge on this important issue; Detailed chapters on the family, school, neighbourhood, lifestyle and peers provide a rich comparative description of these institutions and their impact on delinquency; It tests a number of theoretical perspectives (social control, self-control, social disorganization, routine activities/opportunity theory) on a large international sample from a variety of national contexts; It combines a theoretical focus with a thoughtful consideration of the policy implications of the findings; An extensive discussion of the ISRD methodology of 'flexible standardization' details the challenges of comparative research. The book consists of 12 chapters, which also may be read individually by those interested in particular special topics (for instance, the last chapter should be of special interest to policy makers). The material is presented in such a way that it is accessible to more advanced students, researchers and scholars in a variety of fields, such as criminology, sociology, deviance, social work, comparative methodology, youth studies, substance use studies, and victimology.

This volume is the comprehensive synthesis of the empirical findings of seven important ongoing longitudinal studies of delinquency. It aims to examine the extent to which these studies answer the basic question of the origins of delinquent and criminal careers despite their varying guiding theories, methods, and settings. This book is an important resource for criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, and students on juvenile delinquency, criminology, developmental psychology, and deviant behavior.

Developmental and life-course criminology are both concerned with the study of changes in offending and problem behaviors over time. Developmental studies in criminology focus on psychological factors that influence the onset and persistence of criminal behavior, while life-course studies analyze how changes in social arrangements, like marriage, education or social networks, can lead to changes in offending. Though each perspective is clearly concerned with patterns of offending and problem behavior over time, the literature on each is spread across various disciplines, including criminology & criminal justice, psychology, and sociology. The Oxford Handbook on Developmental and Life-Course Criminology offers the first comprehensive survey of these two approaches together. Edited by three noted authorities in the field, the volume provides in-depth critical reviews of the development of offending, developmental and life-course theories, development correlates and risk/protective factors, life transitions and turning points, and effective developmental interventions from the world's leading scholars. In the first two sections, the contributors provide overviews of specific criminal career parameters, including age-crime curve, prevalence/frequency of offending, and co-offending, and review the main theoretical frameworks in the developmental and life-course criminology areas. They further summarize some of the empirical literature on known developmental correlates and risk/protective factors associated with longitudinal patterns of offending in the next section. The fourth section focuses on life transitions and turning points as they may relate to persistence in-or desistance from-criminal activity into adulthood, while the final section examines the genesis of antisocial, delinquent, and criminal activity, its maintenance, and its cessation. A state of the art overview on the topic, this Handbook aims to be the most authoritative resource on all issues germane to developmental and life-course criminologists and provides next steps for further research.

The field of crime and delinquency attracts a great deal of heated and partial opinion, prejudice and other forms of mal-thinking. When there is a scientific approach there tends to be a psychological explanation. This book, first published in 1971, is a corrective to both trends. It is a discussion of criminal behaviour in relation to a wide range of behaviours which could be called deviance and regards the whole field from the sociological point of view. The whole discussion is related to social policy, and is vital reading for students of sociology and criminology.

This book differentiates between categories of adolescent male offending and explores the behavioural and social profiles of those who become involved in violent offending and organized crime. Using self-reported and arrest data, the book examines key stages of male adolescent offending with a view to early recognition of behaviours that leave young men vulnerable to criminal exploitation and the escalation of violence. It also explains the importance of understanding crime motivations, how young men view themselves when they offend, and the emotions that they experience. Rather than looking at violent offending as a single category of behavior, the book helps readers differentiate between types of adolescent violence and to understand the underlying psychological and social causes. It offers an insight into the journey of young people who are criminally exploited and those who become involved in committing acts of serious violence and organized crime. It does so by using data from official records, self-reported offending, and the narratives of young people. Each chapter focuses on a particular stage of offending with a view to early identification, support, and diversion. Pathways to Adolescent Male Violent Offending is aimed at practitioners in youth offending services, youth work, policing, and education. It will also be useful for students of forensic and investigative psychology, criminal justice, policing, and child and adolescent mental health.

Children and questions of moral behaviour are prominent social discourses. Adult attitudes towards children and their recognition of right and wrong impact upon society deeply, shaping the ways in which we think about children's participation, their citizenship and how they are 'governed' within the community. But upon what basis are such practices and policies built and how do they reflect the reality of social life for children? This work argues that much of society's thinking in relation to children and questions around social behaviour are linked to misplaced assumptions that are routed in views from the past. However, it is by engaging with children though a sociological perspective that it becomes clear that morality is not something that just happens to children but is part of their everyday lives.

Young Offenders provides one of the most in-depth studies of young males seeking, if often failing, to find a life beyond crime and punishment. Through rich interview data of young offenders over a ten year period, this book explores the complex personal and situational factors that promote and derail the desistance process.

Scholars from several countries discuss alternatives to traditional juvenile justice, detailing theory and practice in methods such as non-intervention, reintegrative shaming, and victim-offender mediation, and looking at criminological, ethical, and legal aspects of such alternatives. Of interest t

Leading scholars summarize the current research on risk, protection, and resilience in the context of youth violence and its implications for practice with children and families. It describes an emerging framework for understanding social and health problems and for developing more effective programs for interventions. This book describes resilient children by examining risk factors for violence and explores the factors that lead some children to resist or adapt to risk.

The concept of resilience has been applied to family, school, neighborhood, and organizational contexts. Educational, family, and community resilience are used as the framework to describe social systems that possess risk factors. By understanding why some systems with risk factors are adaptable, information for assessment can be applied to service plans, that will be more effective in treating children at risk of antisocial, aggressive behavior.

--Deviant Behavior offers an engaging and wide-ranging discussion of deviant behavior, beliefs, and conditions. --Encompasses both the explanatory (or positivist) approach and the constructionist (or labeling) perspectives, thereby lending a broad and inclusive vista on deviance. --Explores how society defines what constitutes political deviance; and political deviance and its relation to social change. --Up to date: two chapters new to this edition, along with other timely topical updates throughout the chapters. --Although disease as potential deviance has been covered previously, new coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic greatly expands discussions of this topic. --Written by a renowned scholar of social deviance, the text has been praised as authoritative and accessible.

This book examines young people's involvement in crime (including crimes of violence, vandalism, shoplifting, burglary and car crime) as both victims and offenders.

Although adolescence is the time when involvement in crime peaks, few previous UK-based studies have attempted to provide a methodical and comprehensive understanding of adolescent offending on a city-wide basis. This book seeks a better understanding of adolescent crime by studying the relationship between individual characteristics (social bonds and morality and self-control) and lifestyles (as defined by delinquent peers, substance use and exposure to risky behaviour settings) and their joint influence on adolescent involvement in crime, against the backdrop of the juveniles' social context - taking into account family, school and neighbourhood influences.

The findings of this study suggest the existence of three main groups of adolescent offenders; propensity induced offenders, life-style dependent offenders and situationally limited offenders, groups of offenders having different causal backgrounds to their crime involvement, and who therefore may warrant different strategies for effective prevention.

The relationship between education and youth crime has long been recognised in terms of social policy and public opinion, the full extent of this and its implications has been largely neglected and unexplored: educationalists on the one hand and criminologists on the other have largely failed to engage meaningfully with one another on the issue, and there has often been a large gap between youth justice and educational provision. This book seeks to remedy this deficiency, providing a critical survey of the research evidence, policy development and practical issues relating to education and offending by young people. It has the following objectives: to examine the evolution of social policy and institutions in relation to the relationship between education and offending by young people; establish the scale and nature of the problem and the characteristics of the young people involved; identify any evidence based approaches that could be adopted across education and youth justice; review the effectiveness of New Labour's education and youth justice reforms; propose a series of measures for social policy makers and practitioners in education and youth justice. Young People and Offending will be essential reading for youth justice practitioners as well as students taking courses on youth crime and youth justice, or on youth justice or probation training courses.

This book examines young people's involvement in crime (including crimes of violence, vandalism, shoplifting, burglary and car crime) as victims and offenders. Although adolescence is the time when involvement in crime peaks, surprisingly there are few previous UK based studies that have attempted to provide a methodical and comprehensive understanding of adolescent offending on a citywide basis. Key explanatory factors have been examined for nearly 2000 young people in the city of Peterborough. This book combines a single city focus, large sample size and high response rates with an in-depth consideration of the explanatory factors involved, focusing particularly on the interaction between individual characteristics and lifestyle, and making use of sophisticated statistical analysis. from outdated positivist perspective that has focused on early childhood factors, introducing rather concepts such as peer-delinquency (gangs), hanging around in public spaces (anti-social behaviour) and substance use - which have been not only problematic in previous attempts at criminological theorizing but have also recently become central foci of Governmental policy initiatives. This book shows how these issues and factors can be incorporated sympathetically into a single framework that advances our understanding of criminal behaviour. It makes a highly significant contribution to the wide gaps in our knowledge of why young people offend, and will be essential reading for students, practitioners and policy makers.

The relationship between education and youth crime has long been recognised in terms of social policy and public opinion, the full extent of this and its implications has been largely neglected and unexplored: educationalists on the one hand and criminologists on the other have largely failed to engage meaningfully with one another on the issue, and there has often been a large gap between youth justice and educational provision. This book seeks to remedy this deficiency, providing a critical survey of the research evidence, policy development and practical issues relating to education and offending by young people. It has the following objectives: to examine the evolution of social policy and institutions in relation to the relationship between education and offending by young people; establish the scale and nature of the problem and the characteristics of the young people involved; identify any evidence based approaches that could be adopted across education and youth justice; review the effectiveness of New Labour's education and youth justice reforms; propose a series of measures for social policy makers and practitioners in education and youth justice. Young People and Offending will be essential reading for youth justice practitioners as well as students taking courses on youth crime and youth justice, or on youth justice or probation training courses.