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.

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

This book informs readers about the latest research and the most promising and effective programmes for understanding, preventing and controlling juvenile delinquency.

A selection of papers presented at the international conference, Leuven, May 12-14, 1997.

Reaffirming Rehabilitation, 2nd Edition, brings fresh insights to one of the core works of criminal justice literature. This groundbreaking work analyzes the rehabilitative ideal within the American correctional system and discusses its relationship to and conflict with political ideologies. Many researchers and policymakers rejected the value of rehabilitation after Robert Martinson's proclamation that "nothing works." Cullen and Gilbert's book helped stem the tide of negativism that engulfed the U.S. correctional system in the years that followed the popularization of the "nothing works" doctrine. Now Cullen traces the social impact on U.S. corrections policy. This new edition is appropriate as a textbook in corrections courses and as recommended reading in related courses. It also serves as a resource for researchers and policymakers working in the field of corrections.

As juvenile justice dominates the headlines, the time has come to reexamine the history of this controversial institution. In Transforming Juvenile Justice, Steven L. Schlossman traces the evolution of the idea that young lawbreakers, or potential lawbreakers, merit special treatment. He closely examines the Milwaukee Juvenile Court and the Wisconsin State Reform School to reveal how Progressive theory--the belief that rehabilitation and careful oversight should replace punishment of delinquent youth--played out in practice. Since its original publication in 1977, Schlossman's history of the juvenile justice system contributed to the debate on the delinquency problem and remains a landmark study today. In an engaging new introduction for this fresh edition of his classic, Schlossman reveals his sources of inspiration and relates his discovery of the rare records that offered an exclusive glimpse into the Milwaukee court's day-to-day operations. His account of the changing definitions of delinquency and reformers' attempts to remedy it offers insights on dilemmas that continue to plague American society.

The first special juvenile court was created in 1899. Since then,juvenile justice has had a chequered history, and is now more controversial than ever. Should our treatment of young offenders differ in its aims or principles from that of adult offenders? What role should ideas of punishment or retribution play? Should our aims be rehabilitative and educative rather than punitive? Should we divert young offenders from the criminal justice system altogether, opting for 'restorative' rather than 'retributive' justice? These questions are addressed in this inter-disciplinary volume, which brings together criminologists, educationalists, psychologists and philosophers. Part I traces the history of juvenile justice, identifying patterns, and signs of what the future might hold. Part II tackles fundamental normative issues of punishment, moral education and restoration, with particular emphasis on the role of communication. Part III attends to the role that such emotions as shame and guilt should play in juvenile justice, paying particular, and critical, attention to Braithwaite's conception of reintegrative shaming.