This book explores two major social problems facing Chinese society today: increased strain in the lives of young people and heightened rates of crime and delinquency, ultimately examining the links between them. More broadly, it draws on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and Agnew's general strain theory to examine the factors and processes affecting young people, leading to life strain and delinquency. It represents the first study of this kind and involves the most systematic and comprehensive literature review of studies on major social, economic, political and cultural changes, as well as youth crime in contemporary China. Bao's arguments are supported by empirical evidence including data findings and over a decade's worth of observational research. Shedding new light on the nature of youth crime in a rapidly changing society, this methodical study will benefit policy makers and researchers, helping them to develop tactics and methods to reduce strain in the lives of young people, and thus effectively prevent delinquency in China.

Psychology of Gang Involvement expands existing knowledge by applying psychological knowledge to gangs, including how gang members think, their mental and emotional well-being, and their perceptions of gang involvement, as well as issues relating to gang prevention and intervention strategies. This book offers readers a clearer understanding of the important role that social psychological processes play in the formation and maintenance of gangs and gang membership. It will enhance readers' understanding of gang members' social cognition, emotional intelligence, well-being, and mental health, as well as how these factors potentially promote and sustain individual gang involvement. Readers will discover also how these important psychological characteristics vary according to an individual's commitment to a gang. Organized in three sections, the first focuses on issues relevant to theoretical perspectives of gang involvement. Chapters include detailed examinations of a gang member's experiences and the implications of these for theoretical development, and considerations of the importance of social and psychological issues such as group processes and levels of commitment to gang membership to, understand and explain involvement in gangs. The second section centers on issues such as adverse childhood experiences and trauma, and examines their links to male and female gang membership as potential risk factors and outcomes of gang involvement. The section concludes by contemplating how the mental health, traumatic experiences, and involvement in violence compares between gang members and other violent men in adulthood. The final section considers current responses to gang membership by evaluating individual and group-based approaches to gang prevention and intervention strategies, and concludes with a theoretical conceptualization of how a strengths-based approach could work to reduce gang involvement. This book will be a useful text for a wide range of readers interested in, or working with gang members, including academics and students, practitioners, youth workers, clinicians, and criminal justice agents.

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.

From the running of boys' clubs and, catching truants to supervising troublesome kids and giving them a 'clip round the ear', the role of the police has been a recurrent theme in the debate about juvenile delinquency. Set against the context of wider developments in youth justice in Britain, this book examines the origins, key features and outcomes of police work with young people, the realities of multi-agency decision-making, and the impact on young people and their families.

The vulnerability of juvenile suspects concerns all phases of proceedings but is probably greatest during interrogations in the investigation stage. These early interrogations often constitute the juvenile suspects' first contact with law enforcement authorities during which they are confronted with many difficult questions and decisions. Therefore, the juvenile suspect should already at this stage be provided with an adequate level of procedural protection. The research project 'Protecting Young Suspects in Interrogations' underlying this volume, sprung from the observation that the knowledge of the existing level of procedural protection of juvenile suspects throughout the European Union is limited. More specifically, there is very little knowledge of what actually happens when juvenile suspects are being interrogated. The research project aims to fill at least part of this gap by shedding more light on the existing procedural rights for juveniles during interrogations in five EU Member States representing different systems of juvenile justice (Belgium, England and Wales, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands). In doing so, it intends to identify legal and empirical patterns to improve the effective protection of the juvenile suspect. The project is a joint effort of Maastricht University, Warwick University, Antwerp University, Jagiellonian University and Macerata University in cooperation with Defence for Children and PLOT Limburg.The present volume contains the results of the first part of the research project: a legal comparative study into existing legal procedural safeguards for juvenile suspects during interrogation in the five selected Member States. The country reports incorporated in this volume provide for an in-depth analysis of the existing rules and safeguards applicable during the interrogation of juvenile suspects. On the basis of these findings a transversal analysis is carried out in the final chapter, which is dedicated to the identification of common patterns with a view to harmonising the systems and improving the protection of juvenile suspects' rights. Part 2 and 3 of the research project (empirical research consisting of observations of recorded interrogations and focus group interviews) and a final merging of the legal and empirical findings resulting in a proposal for European minimum rules and best practice on the protection of juvenile suspects during interrogation will be published in a separate, second volume ('Interrogating Young Suspects: Procedural Safeguards from an Empirical Perspective').The book is intended for academics, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers working in the area of juvenile justice and interrogation.

The ubiquity of the internet and social media has influenced the lives of people across the globe, including young people involved in street gangs and troublesome youth groups. This development raises important questions about the causes, features, and consequences of online gang behavior, as well as the consequences of this new phenomenon for gang prevention and intervention. In this edited volume, members of an international network of gang researchers, the Eurogang Program of Research, present findings and insights from recent academic gang studies focused on the use of internet and social media. It focuses on online features of gangs and the consequences of social media for the study of these groups. The second section of the book focuses on the meaning of online media for the prevention, monitoring and intervention of gangs, and for gang disengagement processes. This is the first volume focused on the role of internet and social media in the study of gangs. Providing much needed insights into online gang processes, it will appeal to students and researchers interested in gangs and juvenile delinquency, and to professionals, practitioners, and policy-makers working on preventing or reducing gang involvement and delinquent behavior.

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 surveys the history, current status, and critical issues regarding the various mechanisms designed to control sex offenders. It shows that the social problem of sex offending is not apparently resolvable by any of the means currently employed. A large array of procedures are used in the attempt to control the difficult population of sex offenders, including: imprisonment, institutional and community treatment, community monitoring by probation and parole, electronic monitoring, registration as a sex offender, community notification of an offender's status, strict limits on behavioral movement in the community, and residence restrictions. However, these constraints on behavior are almost completely the result of public outrage regarding sensational sex crimes, overreaction of media coverage that produce inaccurate statements of potential community risk, and the efforts of the legal profession and politicians to quell this anger and foreboding by enacting legislation that supposedly confronts the risk. This book demonstrates that we have constructed a massive edifice of community control that is socially and politically driven and which has largely failed to contain sex crime.

This book examines how attorneys enable a meaningful opportunity for release for individuals sentenced to life as juveniles. The work provides a detailed overview of how legal representation facilitates opportunities for release for juveniles sentenced to life: "juvenile lifers". It contributes to the broader literature on the importance of legal representation in the criminal legal system by investigating the role of an attorney in the parole process. Drawing on interviews with lawyers and qualitative content analyses of attorney participation in parole recordings from one state, the study illustrates how attorney assistance provides an important due process protection in the highly discretionary context of parole. The analysis of attorney representation is situated in the history of how they became prominent in the criminal legal system, and how their assistance has been viewed as vital in the parole process. Prior criminological and legal research relates the impact a lawyer can have by preparing a juvenile lifer candidate to present a suitable narrative for release, one that relates their diminished criminal culpability and rehabilitative efforts to prepare for life beyond prison. The work will be relevant to students, academics, and policy makers, particularly for state parole boards, public defender agencies, and legislatures. While the analysis is based on the experience of one state, the findings are generalizable to other states and countries that similarly conduct parole board hearings for not just their juvenile populations but also adults.

1. Unlike more conventional texts, this book offers over 50 pithy and thought-provoking essays on a wide range of socially and legally prohibited acts, offering students a critical analysis of these issues. 2. Each entry offers further readings and suggestions for other media to develop the reader's understanding of these issues. 3. The new edition has been updated and extended and includes new entries on issues such as the alt-right, protest, online abuse, cybercrime, drug trafficking, populism and use of weapons.

Social Bridges and Contexts in Criminology and Sociology brings together leading scholars to commemorate the illustrious career and enduring contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to the social sciences. Although Professor Short is best known as a gang scholar, he was a bridging figure who advanced the study of human behavior across multiple domains. Individual chapters document Professor Short's intellectual development and highlight the significance of his theoretical and empirical work in a range of specialty areas, including suicide and homicide, criminological theory, field and self-report survey research methodologies, white-collar crime, hazards and risks, levels of explanation, microsocial group processes, and the etiology of gang violence and delinquency. A special feature of this book is the collection of brief personal reflection essays appearing after the main chapters. Authored by Professor Short's students, colleagues, collaborators, and friends, these essays provide powerful testimonials of the influence of his intellectual legacy as well as his generous spirit and commitment to mentorship. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology and sociology, and all those interested in the important contributions of Professor James F. Short, Jr., to these subject areas.

-Offers a deep ethnographic look at the conditions of temporary schooling. -Combines a narrative style with rich sources of data to illuminate the hidden realities of temporary schooling. -First of its kind to provide an in-depth treatment of the organizations and institutions that have been created to school marginal students on a temporary basis.

Youth Justice in Context examines the influence of legislative, organizational, policy and practice issues in shaping what constitutes compliance and how non-compliance is responded to when supervising young offenders in the community. It also addresses the impact of adolescent developmental immaturity and social and personal circumstances in mediating expectations of compliance. A central concern of the book is to explore the manner in which compliance changes over time through the dynamics that arise in the supervisory relationship between practitioners and young people, and against the backdrop of the social and psychological changes that occur in adolescents' lives as they move towards early adulthood. A detailed examination is provided based on the perspectives of probation and youth justice professionals operating across different organizational contexts, and of young people subject to community supervision. To this end, the book offers in-depth analysis on the strategies employed by practitioners in promoting compliance and responding to non-compliance. It also provides unique insights into young people's perceptions of the supervision process, their motivations to comply, and their perspectives on desistance from offending. This book offers an alternative perspective to policies and practices that focus primarily on stringent enforcement and control measures in responding to non-compliance. Youth Justice in Context is suited to academics, researchers, students, policy makers, social workers, probation officers, youth justice workers, social care workers and other practitioners working with young people in the criminal justice system.

Criminal Careers follows the lives and criminal behaviours of 2,397 people in Poland who as juveniles committed a crime and received a form of punishment from the juvenile court between the late 1980s and the year 2000. Through combining quantitative and qualitative research, their criminal careers, the differences between men and women, risk factors, and reasons for nondesistance are analysed. Uniquely, the authors have used an extensive database of former juveniles, in which as many as 40% were women. This book therefore makes a comparison between women and men in terms of their future life paths. Additionally, the researched group consisted of teenagers from two different periods: the 1980s (the transition generation) and 2000 (the millennial generation), which in the context of Central and Eastern European countries means that they entered adulthood in completely different realities. These differences are therefore also explored in depth within the book. By focusing on Poland, the book provides a different perspective to criminal career research, which is generally limited to a few countries in Western Europe and the United States. The book will be of great interest to academics and students who are developing their own research in the fields of criminal careers, juvenile delinquency, and antisocial behaviours by young people. It will also appeal to professionals, including juvenile judges, probation officers, staff in correctional facilities and social rehabilitation institutions, social workers and employees of nonprofit organisations that support juveniles, people in crisis, and prisoners or exprisoners.

This edited volume offers a rich collection of up-to-date research and critical scholarship from various African institutions on incidents of youth violence, intervention and prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. It integrates thinking, evidence, responses, and debates relating to this topic, laying the basis for fresh insights and innovative strategies. The chapters capture a spectrum of pertinent issues such as economic hardship, lockdowns, sexual and reproductive health, pregnancy, online sexual harassment, xenophobic violence, and micro-aggressions in school contexts, and present guidelines on how countries might learn from successful interventions recently implemented. They explore young people's access to familial and community resources, state-sponsored initiatives, peer counselling, youth-friendly services, and other relevant structures. Thus, among other things, this volume stimulates further debate on what is driving violence in different African contexts-specifically, how intersectional identities create vulnerabilities to violence-and influences ways of dealing with the issue. This interdisciplinary and cross-cutting volume serves as a vital resource for experts at universities, in international organisations, civil society groups and intergovernmental organisations who wish to both analyse and take action to address and prevent the type of violence that currently afflicts young people sub-Saharan Africa today.

This book explores how young people perceive the severity of crime and delinquency. It particularly addresses whom or what they consider to be the victims of crime and delinquency, how they analyze and assess appropriate responses by the criminal justice system, as well as their place within it. The book proposes tools for developing a more elaborate and robust understanding of what constitutes crime, identifying those affected by it, and what is deemed adequate or appropriate punishment. In so doing, it offers thick description of young peoples' conceptions of and experiences with crime, delinquency, justice and law, and uses this description to interrogate the role of the state in influencing - indeed, shaping - these perceptions.

This book addresses key issues in the context of the national policy of educating children accused of crimes in Juvenile Courts in Australia. For several decades, National and State Governments in Australia have struggled to define education, constantly seeking to improve the way society applies the concept. This book presents an accurate portrayal of consequences of the education policy of trying to educate troubled children and young people in trouble with the law. It describes the work of juvenile detention centre mathematics teachers and their teaching contexts. It portrays teachers as learners, who ventured with researchers with a theoretical perspective. This book focuses on culturally responsive pedagogies that seek to understand the ways Indigenous children and young people in juvenile detention make sense of their mathematical learning, which, until the time of detention, has been plagued by failure. It examines how the underperformance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are strong determinants of their overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system in Australia. This book presents the argument that if the students’ literacy and numeracy levels can be improved, there is opportunity to build better futures away from involvement in the juvenile justice system and towards productive employment to improve life chances.

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.

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.

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

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.

"Family Life and Youth Offending" examines the relationship between the causes of youth offending and the legal duty of the state to address those causes. In his globally relevant new study Arthur provides the evidence that improving the family environment could be the most effective and enduring strategy for combating juvenile delinquency and associated behavioral, social and emotional problems. In so doing the author argues that youth crime prevention policy should therefore focus on the family context in which offenders find themselves and resources should be diverted from more traditional criminal justice measures and practices.
The book addresses several topical issues:
>how current child welfare legislation, in particular the Children Act 1989, could be employed to prevent children who are at risk of engaging in antisocial and delinquent behavior from offending
> why greater use is not made of the present legislative framework in preventing youth crime
> how existing legal powers could be used in order to discourage and divert young people from engaging in offending behavior
> how international efforts to prevent youth offending have developed in recent years, focussing on countries such as the USA, Canada, Japan, Scotland, France and Scandinavian countries.
Arthur abandons the traditional 'welfare vs. justice' dichotomy and instead outlines a new approach which focuses on the rights and needs of young people in troubled circumstances and their families. This approach recognizes the right of young people in trouble to the development and delivery of preventive services.
This timely new book will be essential reading for students and researchers inCriminology, Law, Social Policy and Youth Studies, as well as professionals and policy makers working in the area of youth delinquency.

This will be the first book in the new "Routledge Advances in Criminology "series.

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.

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.