The Many Faces of Youth Crime

The Many Faces of Youth Crime PDF Author: Josine Junger-Tas
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781441994554
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
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.

Reluctant Gangsters

Reluctant Gangsters PDF Author: John Pitts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134022263
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Book Description
This book provides an account of the emergence, nature and impact of armed youth gangs in an East London Borough over the last decade. It describes the challenges these armed young men and women pose to their communities, those charged with preventing crime and those struggling to vouchsafe 'community safety'. While the focus of the book is 'local', the processes it outlines and the effects it chronicles have both a national and international relevance. It argues that the main reason behind the emergence of the armed youth gang has been the coalesence of two previously discreet socially deviant groups; the rowdy, episodically criminal, adolescent peer group on the one hand and the locally-based organized criminal network on the other. The book analyses the impact of the globalisation of the drugs trade and the consequent shift in the focus of local organized crime from the 'blag' to the 'business'. It also discusses how socio-economic and cultural factors, as well as family and neighbourhood histories and loyalties and localized racial antagonisms all play their part in the emergence of the armed youth gang.

Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309172357
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
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.

Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration

Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration PDF Author: Helmut Kury
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319083988
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1004

Book Description
This work compiles experiences and lessons learned in meeting the unique needs of women and children regarding crime prevention and criminal justice, in particular the treatment and social reintegration of offenders, and serves a as a cross-disciplinary work for academic and policy-making analyses and follow-up in developing and developed countries. Furthermore, it argues for a more humane and effective approach to countering delinquency and crime among future generations. In a world where development positively depends on the rule of law and the related investment security, two global trends may chart the course of development: urbanization and education. Urbanization will globalize the concepts of “justice” and “fairness”; education will be dominated by the urban mindset and digital service economy, just as a culture of lawfulness will. This work looks at crime prevention education as an investment in the sustainable quality of life of succeeding generations, and at those who pursue such crime prevention as the providers of much-needed skills in the educational portfolio. Adopting a reformist approach, this work collects articles with findings and recommendations that may be relevant to domestic and international policymaking, including the United Nations Studies and their educational value for the welfare of coming generations. The books address the relevant United Nations ideas by combining them with academic approaches. Guided by the Editors’ respective fields of expertise, and in full recognition of academic freedom and “organized scepticism”, it includes contributions by lawyers, criminologists, sociologists and other eminent experts seeking to bridge the gap between academic and policy perspectives, as appropriate, against the international background, including the United Nations developments.​ The first volume opens with a foreword by Marta Santos Pais, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, and a general introduction by the editors. Part I provides an overview of United Nations principles for crime prevention and the treatment of women and children. Part II concentrates on education and the social learning of children and adolescents. The importance of quality education is stressed as is its impact on the behaviour of children of all ages. It also includes a discussion of the factors that still hinder access to good schooling in many parts of the world. Part III presents international research findings on children, juveniles and women both as victims and offenders. Statistics show overwhelmingly that these groups are more often victims than offenders.

Young People, Crime and Justice

Young People, Crime and Justice PDF Author: Roger Hopkins Burke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317680413
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Book Description
In the minds of the general public, young people and crime are intrinsically linked; wide-spread belief persists that such activities are a result of the ‘permissive 1960s’ and the changing face of the traditional nuclear family. Roger Hopkins Burke challenges these preconceptions and offers a detailed and comprehensive introduction to youth crime and the subsequent response from the criminal justice system. This extended and fully updated new edition explores: The development of young people and attempts to educate, discipline, control and construct them, Criminological explanations and empirical evidence of why young people become involved in criminality, The system established by the Youth Justice Board, its theoretical foundations, and the extent of its success, Alternative approaches to youth justice around the globe and the apparent homogenisation throughout the neoliberal world. The second edition also includes new chapters looking at youth justice in the wider context of social policy and comparative youth justice. Young People, Crime and Justice is the perfect undergraduate critical introduction to the youth justice system, following a unique left-realist perspective while providing a balanced account of the critical criminology agenda, locating the practical working of the system in the critical socio-economic context. It is essential reading for students taking modules on youth crime, youth justice and contemporary social and criminal justice policy. Text features include key points, chapter summaries and review questions.

Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond

Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond PDF Author: Josine Junger-Tas
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387959823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

Book Description
Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond: Results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study presents the status of juvenile crime and delinquency and its backgrounds in many of the European Union member states as well as in the United States, Canada, Venezuela and Surinam. The book includes information on key issues in juvenile delinquency such as victimization of young people, alcohol and drug use and its relation to juvenile crime, involvement in youth gangs, immigration, family and school and neighborhood situations. It provides insight into different views on what can be considered juvenile crime; what acts are subsumed in its definition and when we can speak about structural delinquent behavior. These insights are based on self-reported information systematically and simultaneously collected from about 70,000 12-15 year old youths in 28 countries. Until recently, the self-report methodology has not been applied on such a large scale in an international context. The results of this survey provide new and unexpected data about those young people who structurally commit criminal acts, as well as on the frequency of the behavior and the conditions that have an impact on offending. The wealth of descriptions and insights in delinquency of all these countries will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners because of the special character of the publication; it is a book of reference to everyone interested in the backgrounds of juvenile delinquency.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime PDF Author: Rosemary Gartner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199838712
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 736

Book Description
Research on gender, sex, and crime today remains focused on topics that have been a mainstay of the field for several decades, but it has also recently expanded to include studies from a variety of disciplines, a growing number of countries, and on a wider range of crimes. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime reflects this growing diversity and provides authoritative overviews of current research and theory on how gender and sex shape crime and criminal justice responses to it. The editors, Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy, have assembled a diverse cast of criminologists, historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and sociologists from a number of countries to discuss key concepts and debates central to the field. The Handbook includes examinations of the historical and contemporary patterns of women's and men's involvement in crime; as well as biological, psychological, and social science perspectives on gender, sex, and criminal activity. Several essays discuss the ways in which sex and gender influence legal and popular reactions to crime. An important theme throughout The Handbook is the intersection of sex and gender with ethnicity, class, age, peer groups, and community as influences on crime and justice. Individual chapters investigate both conventional topics - such as domestic abuse and sexual violence - and topics that have only recently drawn the attention of scholars - such as human trafficking, honor killing, gender violence during war, state rape, and genocide. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime offers an unparalleled and comprehensive view of the connections among gender, sex, and crime in the United States and in many other countries. Its insights illuminate both traditional areas of study in the field and pathways for developing cutting-edge research questions.

Reforming Juvenile Justice

Reforming Juvenile Justice PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309278937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Book Description
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.

Presumed Criminal

Presumed Criminal PDF Author: Carl Suddler
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479850284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
A startling examination of the deliberate criminalization of black youths from the 1930s to today A stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to incarceration, race trumps class, and even as black youths articulate their own experiences with carceral authorities, many Americans remain surprised by the inequalities they continue to endure. In this revealing book, Carl Suddler brings to light a much longer history of the policies and strategies that tethered the lives of black youths to the justice system indefinitely. The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States justice system began to focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation. By the time the federal government began to address the issue of juvenile delinquency, the juvenile justice system shifted its priorities from saving delinquent youth to purely controlling crime, and black teens bore the brunt of the transition. In New York City, increased state surveillance of predominantly black communities compounded arrest rates during the post–World War II period, providing justification for tough-on-crime policies. Questionable police practices, like stop-and-frisk, combined with media sensationalism, cemented the belief that black youth were the primary cause for concern. Even before the War on Crime, the stakes were clear: race would continue to be the crucial determinant in American notions of crime and delinquency, and black youths condemned with a stigma of criminality would continue to confront the overwhelming power of the state.

A Global Perspective on Young People as Offenders and Victims

A Global Perspective on Young People as Offenders and Victims PDF Author: Dirk Enzmann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319632337
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Book Description
This Brief presents the first major release of findings from the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3). ISRD is a major international research collaboration that now covers some 35 countries. It surveys young people aged 12 to 16 in their schools, asking about their experience of crime – both as offenders and as victims – and about their attitudes to crime and justice and about their home and school life. ISRD1 was carried out in 1991-1992 and ISRD2 in 2006-2008. ISRD findings presented here cover the 27 ISRD3 countries for which data are already available, with a total sample approaching 63,000 young people. For most of these countries, the samples are drawn from two major cities. This volume provides key findings on self-reported offending and on victimization.Chapter 1 set the scene, and describes the background to ISRD3. Chapter 2describes the methods used in the survey; respondents complete the ISRD questionnaire either in paper format or – increasingly – using a standardized internet program. Chapter 3 covers key findings on self-reported offending, including the important finding that preparedness to disclose offending varies according to cultural context. Chapter 4 presents findings on victimization, including important new findings on hate crime and the use of parental violence, as well as coverage of more conventional forms of crime. A final chapter summarizes the results and draws out their implications. This Brief will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice,as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, and psychology. Due tothe groundbreaking methodological analyses provided, this Brief is essential reading to all who conduct or use internationally comparative and global survey research.