Juvenile Offending

Tackling juvenile offending has become a key part of crime reduction strategies. The articles selected for this volume examine juvenile offending from various critical perspectives and represent the work of the most influential international figures in the field. The issues addressed include: the different needs and perspectives of youth offenders; whether offenders should be treated differently from others because of their age; recommendations of policy changes; identification of risk factors; issues surrounding the sentencing of juvenile offenders; and the relevance of restorative justice.

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

Summarizing the evidence available on juvenile delinquency prevention, assessment and intervention, this work surveys critical issues in understanding and treating delinquency and anti-social behaviour.

State-of-the-art critical reviews of recent scholarship on the causes of juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice system responses, and public policies to prevent and reduce youth crime are brought together in a single volume authored by leading scholars and researchers in neuropsychology, developmental and social psychology, sociology, history, criminology/criminal justice, and law.

This book provides an empirically grounded, theoretically informed account of recent changes to the youth justice system in England and Wales, focusing on the introduction of elements of restorative justice into the heart of the criminal justice system, and the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels. Taken together, this amounts to the most radical overhaul of the youth justice system in the last half century, fundamentally changing the underlying values of the system away from an 'exclusionary punitive justice' and towards an 'inclusionary restorative justice'. The book explores the implications of these changes by using the lens of a detailed study of the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels to explore wider issues about youth justice policy and the integration of restorative justice principles. It draws upon the findings of an in-depth study of the pilots established prior to the national rollout of referral orders in April 2002. The book will be essential reading not only for those involved in the task of implementing the new youth justice, but others with an interest in the criminal justice system and in restorative justice who need to know about the far reaching reforms to the youth justice system and their impact.

Detailed and comprehensive, Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders presents authoritative discussions by a select group of leading scholars on issues surrounding serious and violent juvenile offenders. This population is responsible for a disproportionate percentage of all crime and poses the greatest challenge to juvenile justice policymakers. Under the skillful editorship of Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington, this unique volume integrates knowledge about risk and protective factors with information about intervention and prevention programs so that conclusions from each area can inform the other. Current literature on these two areas does not, for the most part, apply directly to serious and violent juvenile offenders. This volume contends that serious and violent juvenile offenders tend to start displaying behavior problems and delinquency early in life, warranting early intervention. It is the contributors' thesis that prevention is never too early. They also maintain, however, that interventions for serious and violent juvenile offenders can never be too late in that effective interventions exist for known serious and violent juvenile offenders. Augmented by charts, tables, graphs, figures, and an extensive bibliography, Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders is an excellent reference work and a must read for policy and lawmakers, judges, attorneys, law enforcement personnel, education administrators, researchers, academics, social workers, sociologists, as well as graduate students and interns.

This handbook is an up-to-date examination of advances in the fields of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice that includes interdisciplinary perspectives from leading scholars and practitioners. Examines advances in the fields of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice with interdisciplinary perspectives from leading scholars and practitioners Provides a current state of both fields, while also assessing where they have been and defining where they should go in years to come Addresses developments in theory, research, and policy, as well as cultural changes and legal shifts Contains summaries of juvenile justice trends from around the world, including the US, the Netherlands, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, and China Covers central issues in the scholarly literature, such as social learning theories, opportunity theories, criminal processing, labeling and deterrence, gangs and crime, community-based sanctions and reentry, victimization, and fear of crime