bad parenting and juvenile delinquency essay

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Bad Parenting and Juvenile Delinquency

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Published: Aug 24, 2023

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Neglect and lack of supervision, abuse and negative reinforcement, lack of positive role models, inconsistent discipline and boundaries, psychological and emotional effects, conclusion: addressing the impact.

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Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice (2001)

Chapter: the development of delinquency, the development of delinquency.

Research over the past few decades on normal child development and on development of delinquent behavior has shown that individual, social, and community conditions as well as their interactions influence behavior. There is general agreement that behavior, including antisocial and delinquent behavior, is the result of a complex interplay of individual biological and genetic factors and environmental factors, starting during fetal development and continuing throughout life (Bock and Goode, 1996). Clearly, genes affect biological development, but there is no biological development without environmental input. Thus, both biology and environment influence behavior.

Many children reach adulthood without involvement in serious delinquent behavior, even in the face of multiple risks. Although risk factors may help identify which children are most in need of preventive interventions, they cannot identify which particular children will become serious or chronic offenders. It has long been known that most adult criminals were involved in delinquent behavior as children and adolescents; most delinquent children and adolescents, however, do not grow up to be adult criminals (Robins, 1978). Similarly, most serious, chronically delinquent children and adolescents experience a number of risk factors at various levels, but most children and adolescents with risk factors do not become serious, chronic delinquents. Furthermore, any individual factor contributes only a small part to the increase in risk. It is, however, widely recognized that the more risk factors a child or adolescent experiences, the higher their risk for delinquent behavior.

A difficulty with the literature on risk factors is the diversity of the outcome behaviors studied. Some studies focus on behavior that meets diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder or other antisocial behavior disorders; others look at aggressive behavior, or lying, or shoplifting; still others rely on juvenile court referral or arrest as the outcome of interest. Furthermore, different risk factors and different outcomes may be more salient at some stages of child and adolescent development than at others.

Much of the literature that has examined risk factors for delinquency is based on longitudinal studies, primarily of white males. Some of the samples were specifically chosen from high-risk environments. Care must be taken in generalizing this literature to girls and minorities and to general populations. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, much has been learned about risks for antisocial and delinquent behavior.

This chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of all the literature on risk factors. Rather it focuses on factors that are most relevant to prevention efforts. (For reviews of risk factor literature, see, for example, Hawkins et al., 1998; Lipsey and Derzon, 1998; Rutter et al., 1998.) The chapter discusses risk factors for offending, beginning with risks at the individual level, including biological, psychological, behavioral, and cognitive factors. Social-level risk factors are discussed next; these include family and peer relationships. Finally, community-level risk factors, including school and neighborhood attributes, are examined. Although individual, social, and community-level factors interact, each level is discussed separately for clarity.

INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL RISK FACTORS

A large number of individual factors and characteristics has been associated with the development of juvenile delinquency. These individual factors include age, gender, complications during pregnancy and delivery, impulsivity, aggressiveness, and substance use. Some factors operate before birth (prenatal) or close to, during, and shortly after birth (perinatal); some can be identified in early childhood; and other factors may not be evident until late childhood or during adolescence. To fully appreciate the development of these individual characteristics and their relations to delinquency, one needs to study the development of the individual in interaction with the environment. In order to simplify presentation of the research, however, this section deals only with individual factors.

Studies of criminal activity by age consistently find that rates of offending begin to rise in preadolescence or early adolescence, reach a peak in

late adolescence, and fall through young adulthood (see, e.g., Farrington, 1986a; National Research Council, 1986). Some lawbreaking experience at some time during adolescence is nearly universal in American children, although much of this behavior is reasonably mild and temporary. Although the exact age of onset, peak, and age of desistance varies by offense, the general pattern has been remarkably consistent over time, in different countries, and for official and self-reported data. For example, Farrington (1983, 1986a), in a longitudinal study of a sample of boys in London (the Cambridge Longitudinal Study), found an eightfold increase in the number of different boys convicted of delinquent behavior from age 10 to age 17, followed by a decrease to a quarter of the maximum level by age 24. The number of self-reported offenses in the same sample also peaked between ages 15 and 18, then dropped sharply by age 24. In a longitudinal study of boys in inner-city Pittsburgh (just over half the sample was black and just under half was white), the percentage of boys who self-reported serious delinquent behavior rose from 5 percent at age 6 to about 18 percent for whites and 27 percent for blacks at age 16 (Loeber et al., 1998). A longitudinal study of a representative sample from high-risk neighborhoods in Denver also found a growth in the self-reported prevalence of serious violence from age 10 through late adolescence (Kelley et al., 1997). Females in the Denver sample exhibited a peak in serious violence in midadolescence, but prevalence continued to increase through age 19 for the boys. The study is continuing to follow these boys to see if their prevalence drops in early adulthood. Laub et al. (1998), using the Gluecks' data on 500 juvenile offenders from the 1940s, found that only 25 percent of them were still offending by age 32.

Much research has concentrated on the onset of delinquency, examining risk factors for onset, and differences between those who begin offending early (prior to adolescence) versus those who begin offending in midadolescence. There have been suggestions that early-onset delinquents are more likely than later-onset delinquents to be more serious and persistent offenders (e.g., Moffitt, 1993). There is evidence, however, that predictors associated with onset do not predict persistence particularly well (Farrington and Hawkins, 1991). There are also important problems with the choice of statistical models to create categories of developmental trajectories (Nagin and Tremblay, 1999).

Research by Nagin and Tremblay (1999) found no evidence of late-onset physical aggression. Physical aggression was highest at age 6 (the earliest age for which data were collected for this study) and declined into adolescence. The available data on very young children indicates that frequency of physical aggression reaches a peak around age 2 and then slowly declines up to adolescence (Restoin et al., 1985; Tremblay et al., 1996a).

Those who persist in offending into adulthood may differ from those who desist in a number of ways, including attachment to school, military service (Elder, 1986; Sampson and Laub, 1996), sex, age of onset of offending, incarceration, and adult social bonds (e.g., marriage, quality of marriage, job stability) (Farrington and West, 1995; Quinton et al., 1993; Quinton and Rutter, 1988; Sampson and Laub, 1990). Sampson and Laub (1993) found that marital attachment and job stability significantly reduced deviant behavior in adulthood. Farrington and West (1995) found that offenders and nonoffenders were equally likely to get married, but those who got married and lived with their spouse decreased their offending more than those who remained single or who did not live with their spouse. They also found that offending increased after separation from a spouse. Similarly, Horney et al. (1995) found that married male offenders decreased their offending when living with their spouses and resumed it when not living with them. Within marriages, only good marriages predicted reduction in crime, and these had an increasing effect over time (Laub et al., 1998). Warr (1998) also found that offending decreased after marriage but attributed the decrease to a reduction in the time spent with peers and a reduction in the number of deviant peers following marriage rather than to increased attachment to conventional society through marriage.

Laub et al. (1998) found no difference between persisters and desisters in most family characteristics during childhood (e.g., poverty, parental alcohol abuse or crime, discipline, supervision) or in most individual differences in childhood (e.g., aggression, tantrums, difficult child, verbal IQ). Brannigan (1997) points out that crime is highest when males have the fewest resources, and it lasts longest in those with the fewest investments in society (job, wife, children). Crime is not an effective strategy for getting resources. There is evidence that chronic offenders gain fewer resources than nonoffenders, after the adolescent period (Moffitt, 1993).

The evidence for desistance in girls is not clear. One review of the literature suggests that 25 to 50 percent of antisocial girls commit crimes as adults (Pajer, 1998). There is also some evidence that women are less likely to be recidivists, and that they end their criminal careers earlier than men (Kelley et al., 1997). However, the sexes appear to become more similar with time in rates of all but violent crimes. There is a suggestion that women who persist in crime past adolescence may be more disturbed than men who persist (Jordan et al., 1996; Pajer, 1998).

Prenatal and Perinatal Factors

Several studies have found an association between prenatal and perinatal complications and later delinquent or criminal behavior (Kandel et

al., 1989; Kandel and Mednick, 1991; Raine et al., 1994). Prenatal and perinatal risk factors represent a host of latent and manifest conditions that influence subsequent development.

Many studies use the terms “prenatal or perinatal complications” to describe what is a very heterogeneous set of latent and clinical conditions. Under the heading of prenatal factors, one finds a broad variety of conditions that occurs before birth through the seventh month of gestation (Kopp and Krakow, 1983). Similarly, perinatal factors include conditions as varied as apnea of prematurity (poor breathing) to severe respiratory distress syndrome. The former condition is relatively benign, while the latter is often life-threatening. Although they are risk factors, low birthweight and premature birth do not necessarily presage problems in development.

Prenatal and perinatal risk factors may compromise the nervous system, creating vulnerabilities in the child that can lead to abnormal behavior. Children with prenatal and perinatal complications who live in impoverished, deviant, or abusive environments face added difficulties. According to three major large-scale, long-term studies: (1) developmental risks have additive negative effects on child outcomes, (2) most infants with perinatal complications develop into normally functioning children, and (3) children with long-term negative outcomes who suffered perinatal complications more often than not came from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (Brennan and Mednick, 1997; Broman et al., 1975; Drillien et al., 1980; Werner et al., 1971).

Mednick and colleagues (Brennan and Mednick, 1997; Kandel and Mednick, 1991; Raine et al., 1994) have conducted several investigations in an attempt to elucidate the relationship between criminal behavior and perinatal risk. These and other studies have been unable to identify specific mechanisms to account for the fact that the number of prenatal and perinatal abnormalities tend to correlate with the probability that a child will become a criminal. In addition to the lack of specificity regarding the predictors and the mechanisms of risk, similar measures predict learning disabilities, mental retardation, minimal brain dysfunction, and others (Towbin, 1978). An association between perinatal risk factors and violent offending is particularly strong among offenders whose parents are mentally ill or very poor (Raine et al., 1994, 1997).

Most measures indicate that males are more likely to commit crimes. They are also more vulnerable to prenatal and perinatal stress, as is shown through studies of negative outcomes, including death (Davis and Emory, 1995; Emory et al., 1996).

Hyperactivity, attention problems, and impulsiveness in children have been found to be associated with delinquency. These behaviors can be assessed very early in life and are associated with certain prenatal and perinatal histories (DiPietro et al., 1996; Emory and Noonan, 1984; Lester

et al., 1976; Sameroff and Chandler, 1975). For example, exposure to environmental toxins, such as prenatal lead exposure at very low levels, tends to adversely affect neonatal motor and attentional performance (Emory et al., 1999). Hyperactivity and aggression are associated with prenatal alcohol exposure (Brown et al., 1991; Institute of Medicine, 1996). Prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and nicotine appear to have similar effects. Each tends to be associated with hyperactivity, attention deficit, and impulsiveness (Karr-Morse and Wiley, 1997).

Individual Capabilities, Competencies, and Characteristics

In recent investigations, observable behaviors, such as duration of attention to a toy and compliance with mother's instructions not to touch an object, that are particularly relevant to later misbehavior are observable in the first year of life (Kochanska et al., 1998). However, the ability to predict behavior at later ages (in adolescence and adulthood) from such traits early in life is not yet known. Aggressive behavior is nevertheless one of the more stable dimensions, and significant stability may be seen from toddlerhood to adulthood (Tremblay, 2000).

The social behaviors that developmentalists study during childhood can be divided into two broad categories: prosocial and antisocial. Prosocial behaviors include helping, sharing, and cooperation, while antisocial behaviors include different forms of oppositional and aggressive behavior. The development of empathy, guilt feelings, social cognition, and moral reasoning are generally considered important emotional and cognitive correlates of social development.

Impulsivity and hyperactivity have both been associated with later antisocial behavior (Rutter et al., 1998). The social behavior characteristics that best predict delinquent behavior, however, are physical aggression and oppositionality (Lahey et al., 1999; Nagin and Tremblay, 1999). Most children start manifesting these behaviors between the end of the first and second years. The peak level in frequency of physical aggression is generally reached between 24 and 36 months, an age at which the consequences of the aggression are generally relatively minor (Goodenough, 1931; Sand, 1966; Tremblay et al., 1996a, 1999a). By entry into kindergarten, the majority of children have learned to use other means than physical aggression to get what they want and to solve conflicts. Those who have not learned, who are oppositional and show few prosocial behaviors toward peers, are at high risk of being rejected by their peers, of failing in school, and eventually of getting involved in serious delinquency (Farrington and Wikstrom, 1994; Huesmann et al., 1984; Miller and Eisenberg, 1988; Nagin and Tremblay, 1999; Tremblay et al., 1992a, 1994; White et al., 1990).

The differentiation of emotions and emotional regulation occurs during the 2-year period, from 12 months to 36 months, when the frequency of physical aggression increases sharply and then decreases almost as sharply (Tremblay, 2000; Tremblay et al., 1996a, 1999a). A number of longitudinal studies have shown that children who are behaviorally inhibited (shy, anxious) are less at risk of juvenile delinquency, while children who tend to be fearless, those who are impulsive, and those who have difficulty delaying gratification are more at risk of delinquent behavior (Blumstein et al., 1984; Ensminger et al., 1983; Kerr et al., 1997; Mischel et al., 1989; Tremblay et al., 1994).

A large number of studies report that delinquents have a lower verbal IQ compared with nondelinquents, as well as lower school achievement (Fergusson and Horwood, 1995; Maguin and Loeber, 1996; Moffitt, 1997). Antisocial youth also tend to show cognitive deficits in the areas of executive functions 1 (Moffitt et al., 1994; Seguin et al., 1995), perception of social cues, and problem-solving processing patterns (Dodge et al., 1997; Huesmann, 1988). The association between cognitive deficits and delinquency remains after controlling for social class and race (Moffitt, 1990; Lynam et al., 1993). Few studies, however, have assessed cognitive functioning during the preschool years or followed the children into adolescence to understand the long-term link between early cognitive deficits and juvenile delinquency. The studies that did look at children 's early cognitive development have shown that poor language performance by the second year after birth, poor fine motor skills by the third year, and low IQ by kindergarten were all associated with later antisocial behavior (Kopp and Krakow, 1983; Stattin and Klackenberg-Larsson, 1993; White et al., 1990). Stattin and Klackenberg-Larsson (1993) found that the association between poor early language performance and later criminal behavior remained significant even after controlling for socioeconomic status.

Epidemiological studies have found a correlation between language delay and aggressive behavior (Richman et al., 1982). Language delays may contribute to poor peer relations that, in turn, result in aggression (Campbell, 1990a). The long-term impact of cognitively oriented preschool programs on the reduction of antisocial behavior is a more direct indication that fostering early cognitive development can play an important role in the prevention of juvenile delinquency (Schweinhart et al., 1993; Schweinhart and Weikart, 1997). It is important to note that since poor cognitive abilities and problem behaviors in the preschool years also

lead to poor school performance, they probably explain a large part of the association observed during adolescence between school failure and delinquency (Fergusson and Horwood, 1995; Maguin and Loeber, 1996; Tremblay et al., 1992).

Several mental health disorders of childhood have been found to put children at risk for future delinquent behavior. Conduct disorder is often diagnosed when a child is troublesome and breaking rules or norms but not necessarily doing illegal behavior, especially at younger ages. This behavior may include lying, bullying, cruelty to animals, fighting, and truancy. Most adolescents in U.S. society at some time engage in illegal behaviors, whether some kind of theft, aggression, or status offense. Many adolescents, in the period during which they engage in these behaviors, are likely to meet formal criteria for conduct disorder. Behavior characterized by willful disobedience and defiance is considered a different disorder (oppositional defiant disorder), but often occurs in conjunction with conduct disorder and may precede it.

Several prospective longitudinal studies have found that children with attention and hyperactivity problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, show high levels of antisocial and aggressive behavior (Campbell, 1990b; Hechtman et al., 1984; Loney et al., 1982; Sanson et al., 1993; Satterfield et al., 1982). Early hyperactivity and attention problems without concurrent aggression, however, appear not to be related to later aggressive behavior (Loeber, 1988; Magnusson and Bergman, 1990; Nagin and Tremblay, 1999), although a few studies do report such relationships (Gittelman et al., 1985; Mannuzza et al., 1993, 1991).

Another disorder that is often associated with antisocial behavior and conduct disorder is major depressive disorder, particularly in girls (Kovacs, 1996; Offord et al., 1986; Renouf and Harter, 1990). It is hypothesized that depression during adolescence may be “a central pathway through which girls' serious antisocial behavior develops ” (Obeidallah and Earls, 1999:1). In girls, conduct disorder may be a kind of manifestation of the hopelessness, frustration, and low self-esteem that often characterizes major depression.

For juveniles as well as adults, the use of drugs and alcohol is common among offenders. In 1998, about half of juvenile arrestees in the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program tested positive for at least one drug. In these same cities, 2 about two-thirds of adult arrestees tested

positive for at least one drug (National Institute of Justice, 1999). Of course, drug use is a criminal offense on its own, and for juveniles, alcohol use is also a status delinquent offense. A number of studies have consistently found that as the seriousness of offending goes up, so does the seriousness of drug use as measured both by frequency of use and type of drug (see Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, 1998). In the longitudinal studies of causes and correlates of delinquency in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester (see Thornberry et al., 1995), serious offenders had a higher prevalence of drug and alcohol use than did minor offenders or nonoffenders. In addition, about three-quarters of drug users in each sample were also involved in serious delinquency (Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, 1998). Similarly, in the Denver Youth Survey, serious offenders had the highest prevalence and frequency of use of alcohol and marijuana of all youth in the study. Nevertheless, only about one-third of serious delinquents were problem drug users (Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, 1998).

Although there appears to be a relationship between alcohol and drug use and criminal delinquency, not all delinquents use alcohol or drugs, nor do all alcohol and drug users commit delinquent acts (other than the alcohol or drug use itself). Those who are both serious delinquents and serious drug users may be involved in a great deal of crime, however. Johnson et al. (1991) found that the small group (less than 5 percent of a national sample) who were both serious delinquents and serious drug users accounted for over half of all serious crimes. Neverthless, it would be premature to conclude that serious drug use causes serious crime (McCord, 2001).

Whatever characteristics individuals have, resulting personalities and behavior are influenced by the social environments in which they are raised. Characteristics of individuals always develop in social contexts.

SOCIAL FACTORS

Children's and adolescents' interactions and relationships with family and peers influence the development of antisocial behavior and delinquency. Family interactions are most important during early childhood, but they can have long-lasting effects. In early adolescence, relationships with peers take on greater importance. This section will first consider factors within the family that have been found to be associated with the development of delinquency and then consider peer influences on delinquent behavior. Note that issues concerning poverty and race are dealt with under the community factors section of this chapter. Chapter 7 deals specifically with issues concerning race.

Family Influences

In assigning responsibility for childrearing to parents, most Western cultures place a heavy charge on families. Such cultures assign parents the task of raising children to follow society's rules for acceptable behavior. It should be no surprise, therefore, when families have difficulties with the task laid on them, that the product often is juvenile delinquency (Kazdin, 1997). Family structure (who lives in a household) and family functioning (how the family members treat one another) are two general categories under which family effects on delinquency have been examined.

Family Structure

Before embarking on a review of the effects of family structure, it is important to raise the question of mechanisms (Rutter et al., 1998). It may not be the family structure itself that increases the risk of delinquency, but rather some other factor that explains why that structure is present. Alternatively, a certain family structure may increase the risk of delinquency, but only as one more stressor in a series; it may be the number rather than specific nature of the stressors that is harmful.

Historically, one aspect of family structure that has received a great deal of attention as a risk factor for delinquency is growing up in a family that has experienced separation or divorce. 3 Although many studies have found an association between broken homes and delinquency (Farrington and Loeber, 1999; Rutter and Giller, 1983; Wells and Rankin, 1991; Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985), there is considerable debate about the meaning of the association. For example, longitudinal studies have found an increased level of conduct disorder and behavioral disturbance in children of divorcing parents before the divorce took place (Block et al., 1986; Cherlin et al., 1991). Capaldi and Patterson (1991) showed that disruptive parenting practices and antisocial personality of the parent(s) accounted for apparent effects of divorce and remarriage. Thus, it is likely that the increased risk of delinquency experienced among children of broken homes is related to the family conflict prior to the divorce or separation, rather than to family breakup itself (Rutter et al., 1998). In their longitudinal study of family disruption, Juby and Farrington (2001) found that boys who stayed with their mothers following disruption had delinquency rates that were almost identical to those reared in intact families.

Being born and raised in a single-parent family has also been associated with increased risk of delinquency and antisocial behavior. Research that takes into account the socioeconomic conditions of single-parent households and other risks, including disciplinary styles and problems in supervising and monitoring children, show that these other factors account for the differential outcomes in these families. The important role of socioeconomic conditions is shown by the absence of differences in delinquency between children in single-parent and two-parent homes within homogeneous socioeconomic classes (Austin, 1978). Careful analyses of juvenile court cases in the United States shows that economic conditions rather than family composition influenced children 's delinquency (Chilton and Markle, 1972). Statistical controls for the mothers' age and poverty have been found to remove effects attributed to single-parent families (Crockett et al., 1993). Furthermore, the significance of being born to a single mother has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. In 1970, 10.7 percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried women (U.S. Census Bureau, 1977). By 1997, births to unmarried women accounted for 32.4 percent of U.S. births (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999). As Rutter and colleagues (1998:185) noted about similar statistics in the United Kingdom: “It cannot be assumed that the risks for antisocial behavior (from being born to a single parent) evident in studies of children born several decades ago will apply to the present generation of births. ” Recent work seems to bear out this conclusion. Gorman-Smith and colleagues found no association between single parenthood and delinquency in a poor, urban U.S. community (Gorman-Smith et al., 1999).

Nevertheless, children in single-parent families are more likely to be exposed to other criminogenic influences, such as frequent changes in the resident father figure (Johnson, 1987; Stern et al., 1984). Single parents often find it hard to get assistance (Ensminger et al., 1983; Spicer and Hampe, 1975). If they must work to support themselves and their families, they are likely to have difficulty providing supervision for their children. Poor supervision is associated with the development of delinquency (Dornbusch et al., 1985; Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Hirschi, 1969; Jensen, 1972; Maccoby, 1958; McCord, 1979, 1982). Summarizing their work on race, family structure, and delinquency in white and black families, Matsueda and Heimer (1987:836) noted: “Yet in both racial groups non-intact homes influence delinquency through a similar process—by attenuating parental supervision, which in turn increases delinquent companions, prodelinquent definitions, and, ultimately, delinquent behavior.” It looks as if the effects of living with a single parent vary with the amount of supervision, as well as the emotional and economic resources that the parent is able to bring to the situation.

A number of studies have found that children born to teenage mothers

are more likely to be not only delinquent, but also chronic juvenile offenders (Farrington and Loeber, 1999; Furstenberg et al., 1987; Kolvin et al., 1990; Maynard, 1997; Nagin et al., 1997). An analysis of children born in 1974 and 1975 in Washington state found that being born to a mother under age 18 tripled the risk of being chronic offender. Males born to unmarried mothers under age 18 were 11 times more likely to become chronic juvenile offenders than were males born to married mothers over the age of 20 (Conseur et al., 1997).

What accounts for the increase in risk from having a young mother? Characteristics of women who become teenage parents appear to account for some of the risk. Longitudinal studies in both Britain and the United States have found that girls who exhibit antisocial behavior are at increased risk of teenage motherhood, of having impulsive liaisons with antisocial men, and of having parenting difficulties (Maughan and Lindelow, 1997; Quinton et al., 1993; Quinton and Rutter, 1988). In Grogger's analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Study of youth, both within-family comparisons and multivariate analysis showed that the characteristics and backgrounds of the women who became teenage mothers accounted for a large part of the risk of their offsprings' delinquency (Grogger, 1997), but the age at which the mother gave birth also contributed to the risk. A teenager who becomes pregnant is also more likely than older mothers to be poor, to be on welfare, to have curtailed her education, and to deliver a baby with low birthweight. Separately or together, these correlates of teenage parenthood have been found to increase risk for delinquency (Rutter et al., 1998). Nagin et al. (1997), in an analysis of data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, found that the risk of criminality was increased for children in large families born to women who began childbearing as a teenager. They concluded that “the onset of early childbearing is not a cause of children's subsequent problem behavior, but rather is a marker for a set of behaviors and social forces that give rise to adverse consequences for the life chances of children” (Nagin et al., 1997:423).

Children raised in families of four or more children have an increased risk of delinquency (Farrington and Loeber, 1999; Rutter and Giller, 1983). It has been suggested that large family size is associated with less adequate discipline and supervision of children, and that it is the parenting difficulties that account for much of the association with delinquency (Farrington and Loeber, 1999). Work by Offord (1982) points to the influence of delinquent siblings rather than to parenting qualities. Rowe and Farrington (1997), in an analysis of a London longitudinal study, found that there was a tendency for antisocial individuals to have large families. The effect of family size on delinquency was reduced when parents' criminality was taken into account.

Family Interaction

Even in intact, two-parent families, children may not receive the supervision, training, and advocacy needed to ensure a positive developmental course. A number of studies have found that poor parental management and disciplinary practices are associated with the development of delinquent behavior. Failure to set clear expectations for children 's behavior, inconsistent discipline, excessively severe or aggressive discipline, and poor monitoring and supervision of children predict later delinquency (Capaldi and Patterson, 1996; Farrington, 1989; Hawkins et al., 1995b; McCord, 1979). As Patterson (1976, 1995) indicates through his research, parents who nag or use idle threats are likely to generate coercive systems in which children gain control through misbehaving. Several longitudinal studies investigating the effects of punishment on aggressive behavior have shown that physical punishments are more likely to result in defiance than compliance (McCord, 1997b; Power and Chapieski, 1986; Strassberg et al., 1994). Perhaps the best grounds for believing that family interaction influences delinquency are programs that alter parental management techniques and thereby benefit siblings as well as reduce delinquent behavior by the child whose conduct brought the parents into the program (Arnold et al., 1975; Kazdin, 1997; Klein et al., 1977; Tremblay et al., 1995).

Consistent discipline, supervision, and affection help to create well-socialized adolescents (Austin, 1978; Bender, 1947; Bowlby, 1940; Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Goldfarb, 1945; Hirschi, 1969; Laub and Sampson, 1988; McCord, 1991; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Furthermore, reductions in delinquency between the ages of 15 and 17 years appear to be related to friendly interaction between teenagers and their parents, a situation that seems to promote school attachment and stronger family ties (Liska and Reed, 1985). In contrast, children who have suffered parental neglect have an increased risk of delinquency. Widom (1989) and McCord (1983) both found that children who had been neglected were as likely as those who had been physically abused to commit violent crimes later in life. In their review of many studies investigating relationships between socialization in families and juvenile delinquency, Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber (1986) concluded that parental neglect had the largest impact.

Child abuse, as well as neglect, has been implicated in the development of delinquent behavior. In three quite different prospective studies from different parts of the country, childhood abuse and neglect have been found to increase a child's risk of delinquency (Maxfield and Widom, 1996; Smith and Thornberry, 1995; Widom, 1989; Zingraff et al., 1993). These studies examined children of different ages, cases of childhood abuse and neglect from different time periods, different definitions of

child abuse and neglect, and both official and self-reports of offending, but came to the same conclusions. The findings are true for girls as well as boys, and for black as well as for white children. In addition, abused and neglected children start offending earlier than children who are not abused or neglected, and they are more likely to become chronic offenders (Maxfield and Widom, 1996). Victims of childhood abuse and neglect are also at higher risk than other children of being arrested for a violent crime as a juvenile (Maxfield and Widom, 1996).

There are problems in carrying out scientific investigations of each of these components as predictors of juvenile delinquency. First, these behaviors are not empirically independent of one another. Parents who do not watch their young children consistently are less likely to prevent destructive or other unwanted behaviors and therefore more likely to punish. Parents who are themselves unclear about what they expect of their children are likely to be inconsistent and to be unclear in communications with their children. Parenting that involves few positive shared parent-child activities will often also involve less monitoring and more punishing. Parents who reject their children or who express hostility toward them are more likely to punish them. Parents who punish are more likely to punish too much (abuse).

Another problem is the lack of specificity of effects of problems in childrearing practices. In general, problems in each of these areas are likely to be associated with problems of a variety of types —performance and behavior in school, with peers, with authorities, and eventually with partners and offspring. There are also some children who appear to elicit punishing behavior from parents, and this may predate such parenting. Therefore, it is necessary to take account of children's behavior as a potential confounder of the relationship between early parenting and later child problems, because harsh parenting may be a response to a particular child's behavior (Tremblay, 1995). It is also possible that unnecessarily harsh punishment is more frequently and intensely used by parents who are themselves more aggressive and antisocial. Children of antisocial parents are at heightened risk for aggressive, antisocial, and delinquent behavior (e.g., McCord, 1991; Serbin et al., 1998).

Social Setting

Where a family lives affects the nature of opportunities that will be available to its members. In some communities, public transportation permits easy travel for those who do not own automobiles. Opportunities for employment and entertainment extend beyond the local boundaries. In other communities, street-corner gatherings open possibilities for illegal activities. Lack of socially acceptable opportunities leads to frustra-

tion and a search for alternative means to success. Community-based statistics show high correlations among joblessness, household disruption, housing density, infant deaths, poverty, and crime (Sampson, 1987, 1992).

Community variations may account for the fact that some varieties of family life have different effects on delinquency in different communities (Larzelere and Patterson, 1990; Simcha-Fagan and Schwartz, 1986). In general, consistent friendly parental guidance seems to protect children from delinquency regardless of neighborhoods. But poor socialization practices seem to be more potent in disrupted neighborhoods (McCord, 2000).

Neighborhoods influence children's behavior by providing examples of the values that people hold, and these examples influence children's perception of what is acceptable behavior. Communities in which criminal activities are common tend to establish criminal behavior as acceptable. Tolerance for gang activities varies by community (Curry and Spergel, 1988; Horowitz, 1987).

In sum, family life influences delinquency in a variety of ways. Children reared by affectionate, consistent parents are unlikely to commit serious crimes either as juveniles or as adults. Children reared by parents who neglect or reject them are likely to be greatly influenced by their community environments. When communities offer opportunities for and examples of criminal behavior, children reared by neglecting or rejecting parents are more likely to become delinquents. And delinquents are likely to become inadequate parents.

Peer Influences

A very robust finding in the delinquency literature is that antisocial behavior is strongly related to involvement with deviant peers. One longitudinal study reported that involvement with antisocial peers was the only variable that had a direct effect on subsequent delinquency other than prior delinquency (Elliott et al., 1985). Factors such as peer delinquent behavior, peer approval of deviant behavior, attachment or allegiance to peers, time spent with peers, and peer pressure for deviance have all been associated with adolescent antisocial behavior (Hoge et al., 1994; Thornberry et al., 1994). In other words, the effects of deviant peers on delinquency are heightened if adolescents believe that their peers approve of delinquency, if they are attached to those peers, if they spend much time with them, and if they perceive pressure from those peers to engage in delinquent acts.

There is a dramatic increase during adolescence in the amount of time adolescents spend with their friends, and peers become increasingly

important during this developmental period. Moreover, peers appear to be most important during late adolescence, with their importance peaking at about age 17 and declining thereafter (Warr, 1993). Thus the decline in delinquency after about age 18 parallels the decline in the importance of peers, including those with deviant influences. Consistent with this view, in the longitudinal research of antisocial British youth by West and Farrington (1977), deviant youth reported that withdrawal from delinquent peer affiliations was an important factor in desistance from offending.

Peer influences appear to have a particularly strong relationship to delinquency in the context of family conflict. For example, adolescents ' lack of respect for their parents influenced their antisocial behavior only because it led to increases in antisocial peer affiliations (Simmons et al., 1991). Patterson et al. (1991) showed that association with deviant peers in 6th grade could be predicted from poor parental monitoring and antisocial activity in 4th grade. And 6th grade association with deviant peers, in turn, predicted delinquency in 8th grade. In adolescence, susceptibility to peer influence is inversely related to interaction with parents (Kandel, 1980; Kandel and Andrews, 1987; Steinberg, 1987).

Other research suggests that adolescents usually become involved with delinquent peers before they become delinquent themselves (Elliott, 1994b; Elliott et al., 1985; Simons et al., 1994). In those cases in which an adolescent was delinquent prior to having delinquent friends, the delinquency was exacerbated by association with deviant peers (Elliott, 1994b; Elliott and Menard, 1996; Thornberry et al., 1993).

The influence of peers varies depending on the influence of parents. In general, peer influence is greater among children and adolescents who have little interaction with their parents (Kandel et al., 1978; Steinberg, 1987). Parents seem to have more influence on the use of drugs among working-class than among middle-class families, and among blacks more than whites (Biddle et al., 1980). Parents also appear to be more influential for the initial decision whether to use any drugs than for ongoing decisions about how and when to use them (Kandel and Andrews, 1987). Patterson and his coworkers emphasize both family socialization practices and association with deviant peers as having strong influences on the onset of delinquency. He hypothesized that “the more antisocial the child, the earlier he or she will become a member of a deviant peer group” (Patterson and Yoerger, 1997:152).

Adolescents report an increasing admiration of defiant and antisocial behavior and less admiration of conventional virtues and talents from age 10 to age 18. They also consistently report that their peers are more antisocial and less admiring of conventional virtues than they are. At age 11, boys report peer admiration of antisocial behavior at a level that is equivalent to what peers actually report at age 17 (Cohen and Cohen,

1996). Adolescents may be more influenced by what they think their peers are doing than by what they actually are doing (Radecki and Jaccard, 1995).

Not only may association with delinquent peers influence delinquent behavior, but also committing a crime with others—co-offending—is a common phenomenon among adolescents (Cohen, 1955; Reiss and Farrington, 1991; Reiss, 1988; Sarnecki, 1986). Much of this behavior occurs in relatively unstable pairings or small groups, not in organized gangs (Klein, 1971; Reiss, 1988). The fact that teenagers commit most of their crimes in pairs or groups does not, of course, prove that peers influence delinquency. Such an influence may be inferred, however, from the increase in crime that followed successful organization of gangs in Los Angeles (Klein, 1971). More direct evidence comes from a study by Dishion and his colleagues. Their research points to reinforcement processes as a reason why deviance increases when misbehaving youngsters get together. Delinquent and nondelinquent boys brought a friend to the laboratory. Conversations were videotaped and coded to show positive and neutral responses by the partner. Among the delinquent pairs, misbehavior received approving responses—in contrast with the nondelinquent dyads, who ignored talk about deviance (Dishion et al., 1996). In addition, reinforcement of deviant talk was associated with violent behavior, even after statistically controlling the boys ' histories of antisocial behavior and parental use of harsh, inconsistent, and coercive discipline (Dishion et al., 1997).

The powerful influence of peers has probably not been adequately acknowledged in interventions designed to reduce delinquency and antisocial behavior. Regarding school-based interventions, among the least effective, and at times harmful, are those that aggregate deviant youth without adult supervision, such as in peer counseling and peer mediation (Gottfredson et al., 1998). Furthermore, high-risk youth are particularly likely to support and reinforce one another 's deviant behavior (e.g., in discussions of rule breaking) when they are grouped together for intervention. Dishion and his colleagues have labeled this process “deviancy training,” which was shown to be associated with later increases in substance use, delinquency, and violence (see the review in Dishion et al., 1999). They argued that youth who are reinforced for deviancy through laughter or attention, for example, are more likely to actually engage in deviant behavior. It is evident that intervenors need to give serious attention to the composition of treatment groups, especially in school settings. It may be more fruitful to construct intervention groups so that low- and moderate-risk youth are included with their high-risk counterparts to minimize the possibility of deviancy training and harmful intervention effects.

Studies of gang participants suggest that, compared with offenders who are not gang members, gang offenders tend to be younger when they begin their criminal careers, are more likely to be violent in public places, and are more likely to use guns (Maxson et al., 1985). Several studies have shown that gang membership is associated with high rates of criminal activities (e.g., Battin et al., 1998; Esbensen et al., 1993; Huff, 1998; Thornberry, 1998; Thornberry et al., 1993). These and other studies (e.g., Pfeiffer, 1998) also suggest that gangs facilitate violence. The heightened criminality and violence of gang members seem not to be reducible to selection. That is, gang members do tend to be more active criminals prior to joining a gang than are their nonjoining, even delinquent peers. During periods of gang participation, however, gang members are more criminally active and more frequently violent than they were either before joining or after leaving gangs. Furthermore, some evidence suggests that gang membership had the greatest effects on those who had not previously committed crimes (Zhang et al., 1999). The literature on gang participation, however, does not go much beyond suggesting that there is a process that facilitates antisocial, often violent, behavior. Norms and pressure to conform to deviant values have been suggested as mechanisms. How and why these are effective has received little attention.

COMMUNITY FACTORS

School policies that affect juvenile delinquency.

Delinquency is associated with poor school performance, truancy, and leaving school at a young age (Elliott et al., 1978; Elliott and Voss, 1974; Farrington, 1986b; Hagan and McCarthy, 1997; Hawkins et al., 1998; Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, 1998; Kelly, 1971; Maguin and Loeber, 1996; Polk, 1975; Rhodes and Reiss, 1969; Thornberry and Christenson, 1984). To what extent do school policies contribute to these outcomes for high-risk youngsters? This section outlines what is known about the effects of some of the major school policies that have a particular impact on adolescent delinquents and those at risk for delinquency. The topics covered are grade retention, suspension, and expulsion as disciplinary techniques and academic tracking. These are complex topics about which there is a large literature. This section does not attempt to summarize that literature, but rather to highlight issues that appear to affect juvenile criminality.

Grade Retention

Grade retention refers to the practice of not promoting students to the next grade level upon completion of the current grade at the end of the

school year. Low academic achievement is the most frequent reason given by teachers who recommend retention for their students (Jimerson et al., 1997).

There is no precise national estimate of the number of youths who experience grade retention, but the practice was widespread in the 1990s. Contrary to the public perception that few students fail a grade (Westbury, 1994), it is estimated that approximately 15 to 19 percent of students experience grade retention.

Despite the intuitive appeal of retention as a mechanism for improving student performance, the retention literature overwhelmingly concludes that it is not as effective as promotion. Smith and Shepard (1987:130) summarize the effects of grade retention as follows:

The consistent conclusion of reviews is that children make progress during the year in which they repeat a grade, but not as much progress as similar children who were promoted. In controlled studies of the effect of nonpromotion on both achievement and personal adjustment, children who repeat a grade are worse off than comparable children who are promoted with their age-mates. Contrary to popular belief, the average negative effect of retention on achievement is even greater than the negative effect on emotional adjustment and self-concept.

Aside from the effectiveness issue, there are other negative consequences of retention. Retention increases the cost of educating a pupil (Smith and Shepard, 1987). According to Smith and Shepard (1987), alternatives to retention, such as tutoring and summer school, are both more effective and less costly. Retention has negative effects on the emotional adjustment of retainees. For example, Yamamoto and Byrnes (1984) reported that next to blindness and the death of a parent, children rated the prospect of retention as the most stressful event they could suffer. Retained students have more negative attitudes about school and develop characteristics of “learned helplessness,” whereby they blame themselves for their failure and show low levels of persistence. There is a consistent relationship between retention and school dropout (Roderick, 1994; Shepard and Smith, 1990). Dropouts are five times more likely to have repeated a grade than nondropouts, and students who repeat two grades have nearly a 100 percent probability of dropping out. Finally, there are issues of fairness and equity, in that males and ethnic minority children are more likely to be retained (Jimerson et al., 1997).

School Suspension and Expulsion

Unlike grade retention, which is a school policy primarily for young children in the early elementary grades who display academic problems,

suspension and expulsion are mainly directed toward older (secondary school) students whose school difficulties manifest themselves as behavioral problems. Both suspension and expulsion are forms of school exclusion, with the latter being presumably reserved for the most serious offenses.

Supporters of suspension argue that, like any other disciplinary action, suspension reduces the likelihood of misbehavior for the period immediately after suspension and that it can serve as a deterrent to other potentially misbehaving students. Opponents of suspension view the consequences of this disciplinary action as far outweighing any potential benefits. Some of the consequences cited include loss of self-respect, increased chances of coming into contact with a delinquent subculture, the vicious cyclical effects of being unable to catch up with schoolwork, and the stigma associated with suspension once the target child returns to school (Williams, 1989). Furthermore, most investigations of school suspensions have found that serious disciplinary problems are quite rarely the cause of suspension (Cottle, 1975; Kaeser, 1979; McFadden et al., 1992). The majority of suspensions in districts with high suspension rates are for behavior that is not threatening or serious.

The probability of being suspended is unequal among students. Urban students have the highest suspension rates, suburban students have the second highest rates, and rural school students have the lowest rates (Wu et al., 1982). Suspension rates also vary according to sex, race, socioeconomic background, and family characteristics. Male students in every kind of school and education level are about three times more likely to be suspended as females. Suspension rates also vary by race. Statistics indicate that minority students are suspended disproportionately compared with their share in the population and their share of misbehavior, and these racial disparities have the greatest impact on black students; their rate of suspension is over twice that of other ethnic groups, including whites, Hispanics, and Asians (Williams, 1989). Furthermore, black students are likely to receive more severe forms of suspension than other students, even for similar behaviors requiring disciplinary action. In one study, for example, white students were more likely to receive in-school suspension than out-of-school suspension, whereas the reverse pattern was true for black students who had violated school rules (McFadden et al., 1992). This inequality in treatment exists even when factors such as poverty, behavior and attitudes, academic performance, parental attention, and school governance are considered. Students at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum tend to be more frequently suspended. Many suspended students come from single-parent families in which the parent had less than a 10th grade education.

Suspended students frequently have learning disabilities or inad-

equate academic skills. Wu et al. (1982) noted a positive relationship between the student suspension rate in a school and the average percentage of students of low ability reported by all teachers in a school. Low-ability students are suspended more than expected, given the number of incidents of misbehavior attributed to them. According to Wu et al. (1982), this phenomenon appears to work in either of two ways. If a student's academic performance is below average, the probability of being suspended increases. And if a school places considerable emphasis on the academic ability of its students, the probability of suspension increases.

Although there is not very much recent empirical research on the effects of school suspension, it appears to be especially detrimental to low-achieving students who may misbehave because they are doing poorly in school. Nor does suspension appear to reduce the behavior it is designed to punish. For example, McFadden et al. (1992) reported that the rate of recidivism remained extremely high across all groups of suspended students in their large study of a Florida school district. Less than 1 percent of disciplined youngsters were one-time offenders, 75 percent were cited for one to five subsequent events during the school year, and 25 percent engaged in more than five serious misbehaviors.

There appear to be clear biases in the use of suspension as a disciplinary action, with black students more likely to be the target of this bias. In the McFadden et al. (1992) study, white students were more likely than their black counterparts to be referred for such misbehaviors as truancy, defiance of authority, and fighting. However, it was the black students who were disproportionately more likely to receive the most severe sanctions, including corporal punishment and out-of-school suspension. As these authors state: “Even though black pupils accounted for only 36.7% of the disciplinary referrals, they received 54.1% of the corporal punishment and 43.9% of the school suspensions, but only 23.1% of the internal suspensions. Additionally, 44.6% of all black pupils referred received corporal punishment, compared to only 21.7% of white pupils and 22.7% of Hispanic pupils” (p. 144).

In sum, the literature reveals that school suspension is academically detrimental, does not contribute to a modification of misbehavior, and is disproportionately experienced by black males, among students who misbehave.

In recent years, expulsion has become a part of the debate on school discipline that has accompanied the rising concern about school violence, particularly that related to weapons possession and increasingly defiant, aggressive behavior by students in school. One result of this debate has been what Morrison et al. (1997) refer to as “zero-tolerance ” disciplinary policies. In California, for example, principals and superintendents are legally obligated to recommend expulsion from the school district for any

student who commits certain offenses, such as bringing weapons to school, brandishing a knife at another person, or unlawfully selling illegal drugs (California Department of Education, 1996-Education Code Section 48900). Such a policy may be expected to increase expulsion given that school officials are required to recommend it in these cases.

Characteristics of children who are expelled parallel those of children who are suspended from school. Students who are expelled tend to be in grades 8 through 12 (Bain and MacPherson, 1990; Hayden and Ward, 1996). There is a fairly substantial group of younger schoolchildren expelled from school; most of them come from the higher age range of students in elementary school. Expulsion is, however, primarily a secondary school phenomenon. About 80 to 90 percent of expelled students are boys, urban students are expelled at a higher rate that students from suburban and rural areas, and minority students are more likely to be expelled than white students.

Morrison and D'Incau (1997) specified four factors related to school adjustment that predicted behavior resulting in recommendation for expulsion. The first is academic performance; poor grade point average, particularly in English and math, and low achievement scores appear to be related to behavior that leads to expulsion. The second is attendance; many expelled students were habitual truants. The third is discipline; many students who experienced expulsion had records of previous suspension. The last factor is special education history; approximately 25 percent of expelled students were either currently, in the past, or in the process of being determined as eligible for special education services.

When children are suspended or expelled from school, their risk for delinquency increases. Exclusion from school makes it more difficult for a child to keep up with academic subjects. Furthermore, with extra time out of school, children are likely to have more time without supervision, and therefore be in a situation known to encourage crime. Effects of school suspension seem to extend beyond childhood. Even after accounting for juvenile criminality, in a national sample of male high school graduates, those who had been suspended were more likely to be incarcerated by the age of 30 (Arum and Beattie, 1999).

School Tracking

Academic tracking, also known as “ability grouping” or “streaming,” describes teaching practices whereby students who seem to be similar in ability are grouped together for instruction. The idea is to reduce the range of individual differences in class groups in order to simplify the task of teaching. Informal tracking is common in elementary schools. For example, teachers may divide children into reading groups based on their

reading skills. Some schools divide students into classrooms based on their assumed ability to learn. These groupings typically also set off upper- and middle-class white children from all others. Because of the fluidity of learning, the particular group into which a child is placed reflects the opinions of the person making the placement at least as much as the ability of the child (see Ball et al., 1984).

Unlike retention, which has been employed mostly in elementary school, and suspension and expulsion, which are largely secondary school phenomena, tracking has proliferated at all levels of schooling in American education. According to Slavin (1987), the practice is nearly universal in some form in secondary schools and very common in elementary schools. A good deal of informal evidence shows that when children considered to be slow learners are grouped together, they come to see themselves in an unfavorable light. Such self-denigration contributes to dislike for school, to truancy, and even to delinquency (Berends, 1995; Gold and Mann, 1972; Kaplan and Johnson, 1991).

Reviews of the effects of tracking in secondary school reach four general conclusions, all suggesting that the impact is largely negative for students in low tracks (see Oakes, 1987). Students in the low-track classes show poorer achievement than their nontracked counterparts. Slavin (1990) found no achievement advantage among secondary school students in high- or average-track classes over their peers of comparable ability in nontracked classes. Rosenbaum (1976) studied the effects of tracking on IQ longitudinally and found that test scores of students in low tracks became homogenized, with a lower mean score over time. Furthermore, he found that students in low tracks tend to be less employable and earn lower wages than other high school graduates; they also often suffer diminished self-esteem and lowered aspirations, and they come to hold more negative attitudes about school. These emotional consequences greatly increase the likelihood of dropping out of school and engaging in delinquent behavior (both in and out of school). One of the clearest findings in research on academic tracking in secondary school is that disproportionate numbers of poor and ethnic minority youngsters (particularly black and Hispanic) are placed in low-ability or noncollege prep tracks (Oakes, 1987). Even within the low-ability (e.g., vocational) tracks, minority students are frequently trained for the lowest-level jobs. At the same time, minority youngsters are consistently underrepresented in programs for the talented and gifted. These disparities occur whether placements are based on standardized test scores or on counselor and teacher recommendations. Oakes and other sociologists of education (e.g., Gamoran, 1992; Kilgore, 1991; Rosenbaum, 1976) have argued that academic tracking frequently operates to perpetuate racial inequality and social stratification in American society.

It is quite evident that all of the policies reviewed here are associated with more negative than positive effects on children at risk for delinquency. As policies to deal with low academic achievement or low ability, neither retention nor tracking leads to positive benefits for students who are experiencing academic difficulty and may reinforce ethnic stereotypes among students who do well. As policies to deal with school misbehavior, neither suspension nor expulsion appears to reduce undesired behavior, and both place excluded children at greater risk for delinquency. Furthermore, every policy covered in this overview has been found to impact ethnic minority youngsters disproportionately.

Neighborhood

Growing up in an adverse environment increases the likelihood that a young person will become involved in serious criminal activity during adolescence. Existing research points strongly to the relationship between certain kinds of residential neighborhoods and high levels of crime among young people. Research also points to a number of mechanisms that may account for this association between neighborhood and youth crime. While more research is needed to improve understanding of the mechanisms involved, the link between neighborhood environment and serious youth crime is sufficiently clear to indicate a need for close attention to neighborhood factors in the design of prevention and control efforts.

Two different kinds of research point to the importance of social environment in the generation of antisocial behavior and crime. First, research on the characteristics of communities reveals the extremely unequal geographic distribution of criminal activity. Second, research on human development points consistently to the importance of environment in the emergence of antisocial and criminal behavior. While researchers differ on their interpretation of the exact ways in which personal factors and environment interact in the process of human development, most agree on the continuous interaction of person and environment over time as a fundamental characteristic of developmental processes. Although certain persons and families may be strongly at risk for criminal behavior in any environment, living in a neighborhood where there are high levels of poverty and crime increases the risk of involvement in serious crime for all children growing up there.

This section reviews various strands of research on neighborhoods and crime and on the effects of environment on human development for the purpose of evaluating the contributions of neighborhood environment to patterns of youth crime and prospects for its prevention and control.

Neighborhood Concentrations of Serious Youth Crime

Crime and delinquency are very unequally distributed in space. The geographic concentration of crime occurs at various levels of aggregation, in certain cities and counties and also in certain neighborhoods within a given city or county. For example, cities with higher levels of poverty, larger and more densely settled populations, and higher proportions of unmarried men consistently experience higher homicide rates than those that do not share these characteristics (Land et al., 1990). Serious youth crime in recent years has also been concentrated in certain urban areas. At the peak of the recent epidemic of juvenile homicide, a quarter of all apprehended offenders in the entire United States were arrested in just five counties, containing the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Detroit, and New York. In contrast, during that same year, 84 percent of counties in the United States reported no juvenile homicides (Sickmund et al., 1997).

The concentration of serious crime, especially juvenile crime, in certain neighborhoods within a given city is just as pronounced as the concentration in certain cities. A great deal of research over a period of many decades employing a wide range of methods has documented the geographic concentration of high rates of crime in poor, urban neighborhoods. Classic studies established the concentration of arrests (Shaw and McKay, 1942) and youth gang activity (Thrasher, 1927) in poor neighborhoods located in inner cities. This relationship has been confirmed in replication studies over the years (Bordua, 1958; Chilton, 1964; Lander, 1954; Sampson and Groves, 1989).

In addition to this correlation of neighborhood poverty levels and high crime rates at any given time, research has also found that change in neighborhood poverty levels for the worse is associated with increasing rates of crime and delinquency (Schuerman and Kobrin, 1986; Shannon, 1986). The causal relationship between increases in neighborhood poverty and increases in crime can move in either direction. In the earlier stages of the process of neighborhood deterioration, increases in poverty may cause increases in crime, while, in later stages, crime reaches such a level that those who can afford to move out do so, thereby increasing the poverty rate even further.

Other social characteristics of poor urban neighborhoods change over time and between nations. In the early part of the 20th century in the United States, poor urban neighborhoods tended to be quite mixed in ethnicity (e.g., Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish), reflecting an era of immigration, and were often located in the older, central parts of cities that were expanding rapidly in outward, concentric waves (Shaw and McKay, 1942). Since the 1950s, poor, urban neighborhoods in the United States have

been much more likely to be dominated by a single cultural group. Blacks and Hispanics, in particular, have experienced an extraordinary degree of residential segregation and concentration in the poorest areas of large cities as a result of racial discrimination in labor and housing markets (Massey and Denton, 1993). In their reanalysis of the Chicago data collected by Shaw and McKay (1942), Bursik and Webb (1982) found that after 1950, changing rates of community racial composition provided a better predictor of juvenile delinquency rates than did the ecological variables.

Poverty and residential segregation are not always urban phenomena. American Indians also experience a great degree of residential segregation and poverty, but rather than in cities, they are segregated on poor, rural reservations. Elsewhere in the developed world, residential concentrations of poor people occur on the periphery of large urban areas, rather than in the center. The construction of large public housing estates in England following World War II produced this kind of urban configuration (Bottoms and Wiles, 1986), in contrast to the concentration on inner-city public housing projects in the United States.

Two important qualifications must be noted with respect to the well-documented patterns of local concentrations of crime and delinquency. First, these patterns do not hold true for minor forms of delinquency. Since a large majority of all adolescent males break the law at some point, such factors as neighborhood, race, and social class do not differentiate very well between those who do or do not commit occasional minor offenses (Elliott and Ageton, 1980).

Second, although some areas have particularly high rates of deviance, in no area do all or most children commit seroius crimes (Elliott et al., 1996; Furstenburg et al., 1999). Still, the concentration of serious juvenile crime in a relatively few residential neighborhoods is well documented and a legitimate cause for concern, both to those living in these high-risk neighborhoods and to the wider society.

Neighborhoods as Mediators of Race and Social Class Disparities in Offending

While studies using differing methods and sources of data are not in agreement on the magnitude of differences in rates of involvement in youth crime across racial, ethnic, and social class categories, most research shows that race, poverty, and residential segregation interact to predict delinquency rates. For example, the three most common approaches to measurement—self-report surveys, victimization surveys, and official arrest and conviction statistics—all indicate high rates of serious offending among young black Americans. There is substantial reason to believe

that these disparate offending rates are directly related to the community conditions under which black children grow up. There is no other racial or ethnic group in the United States of comparable size whose members are nearly as likely to grow up in neighborhoods of concentrated urban poverty (Wilson, 1987). Summarizing this situation, Sampson (1987:353-354) wrote: “the worst urban contexts in which whites reside with respect to poverty and family disruption are considerably better off than the mean levels for black communities.” Although there are more poor white than black families in absolute number, poor white families are far less likely to live in areas where most of their neighbors are also poor. Studies that show stronger effects of race than of class on delinquency must be interpreted in light of the additional stresses suffered by poor blacks as a result of residential segregation.

In comprehensive reviews, scholars have found that adding controls for concentrated neighborhood poverty can entirely eliminate neighborhood-level associations between the proportion of blacks and crime rates. Without controls for concentrated poverty, this relationship is quite strong (Sampson, 1997; Short, 1997). Such research strongly indicates that the unique combination of poverty and residential segregation suffered by black Americans is associated with high rates of crime through the mediating pathway of neighborhood effects on families and children.

These deleterious neighborhood effects have been studied mostly with respect to blacks, but, as the United States has experienced renewed immigration, evidence has also begun to point to similar problems among newer groups of immigrants from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Much of the evidence at this point is contained in ethnographic studies of youthful gang members and drug dealers (Bourgois, 1995; Chin, 1996; Moore, 1978, 1991; Padilla, 1992; Pinderhughes, 1997; Sullivan, 1989; Vigil, 1988; Vigil and Yun, 1990).

Neighborhood-Level Characteristics Associated with High Rates of Crime and Delinquency

Although the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime is robust over time and space, a number of other social characteristics of neighborhoods are also associated with elevated levels of crime and delinquency. Factors such as concentrations of multifamily and public housing, unemployed and underemployed men, younger people, and single-parent households tend to be linked to higher crime rates (Sampson, 1987; Wilson, 1985). These social characteristics frequently go along with overall high levels of poverty, but they also vary among both poor and nonpoor neighborhoods and help to explain why neighborhoods with similar average income levels can have different rates of crime.

Recent research has also begun to examine the social atmosphere of neighborhoods and has found significant relationships with crime rates. Neighborhoods in which people tell interviewers that they have a greater sense of collective efficacy—the sense that they can solve problems in cooperation with their neighbors if they have to —have lower crime rates, even when controlling for poverty levels and other neighborhood characteristics (Sampson et al., 1997).

The number and type of local institutions have often been thought to have an effect on neighborhood safety, and some research seems to confirm this. High concentrations of barrooms are clearly associated with crime (Roncek and Maier, 1991). One recent study has also found a crime-averting effect of youth recreation facilities when comparing neighborhoods with otherwise very high rates of crime and criminogenic characteristics to one another (Peterson et al., 2000). Since assessing the number, characteristics, and quality of neighborhood institutions is quite difficult, this remains an understudied area of great importance, given its considerable theoretical and practical interest.

One type of pernicious neighborhood institution, the youth gang, has been studied extensively and is clearly associated with, though by no means synonymous with, delinquency and crime. Although it is true that an adolescent's involvement with youth gangs is associated with a greatly increased risk of criminal behavior, that risk also accompanies association with delinquent peer groups more generally. A very high proportion of youth crime, much higher than for adults, is committed by groups of co-offenders (Elliott and Menard, 1996; Miller, 1982). Most of these delinquent peer groups do not fit the popular stereotypes of youth gangs, with the attendant ritual trappings of distinctive group names, costumes, hand signs, and initiation ceremonies (Sullivan, 1983, 1996). The broader category of delinquent peer groups, most of which are not ritualized youth gangs, drives up neighborhood delinquency rates.

Comparative neighborhood studies, examining the presence of delinquent and unsupervised adolescent peer groups, have found that these groups are more likely to be found in poor neighborhoods. The strength of this finding is such that the presence of these groups appears to be one of the major factors connecting neighborhood poverty and delinquency (Elliott and Menard, 1996; Sampson and Groves, 1989).

Although most adolescent co-offending is committed in the context of delinquent peer groups that are not ritualized youth gangs, the emergence of ritualized gangs in a neighborhood appears to be associated with even higher levels of offending than occur when ritualized gangs are not present (Spergel, 1995; Thornberry, 1998). For this reason, the recent spread of youth gangs across the United States is cause for serious concern. In the decade from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, youth

gangs emerged in a growing number of cities in the United States, not only in large cities, but also in smaller cities and towns (Klein, 1995; National Youth Gang Center, 1997).

Despite widespread rumors and mass media allegations, this spread of youth gangs does not appear to be the result of systematic outreach, recruitment, and organization from one city to another. The fact that groups calling themselves by similar names, such as Bloods and Crips, have been spreading from city to city may have very little to do with conscious efforts by members of those groups in Los Angeles to build criminal organizations in other cities. Movies and popular music, rather than direct connections between cities, seem to be at least partly responsible for this copying of gang terminology between cities (Decker and Van Winkle, 1996).

Ethnographic Perspectives on Neighborhoods and Development

A second stream of research that examines adolescent development from the perspective of neighborhood environment consists of ethnographic field studies of delinquent individuals and groups growing up in high-crime neighborhoods. These studies range from classic studies conducted in the 1920s and 1930s (Shaw, 1930; Whyte, 1943), through a second wave in the 1960s (Short and Strodtbeck, 1965; Suttles, 1968) and a more recent wave since the late 1980s (Bourgois, 1995; Chin, 1996; Moore, 1978, 1991; Padilla, 1992; Pinderhughes, 1997; Sullivan, 1989; Vigil, 1988; Vigil and Yun, 1990).

Drawing conclusions from these studies about neighborhood effects on child and adolescent development must be approached carefully, because these studies were primarily designed to describe systems of activity and interaction rather than processes of personal development. As a result, there are many limitations on using this body of research for the purpose of examining neighborhood effects on development, chief among them the predominant focus on single, high-crime areas and the focus within those areas on those engaged in delinquent and criminal activity. Because of this double selection on the dependent variables of both area and individual criminal behavior, these studies generally do not allow systematic comparison between high-crime and low-crime areas or between nondelinquent and delinquent youth within areas.

Despite these limitations, the authors of the studies virtually always end up attributing the ongoing nature of delinquent activity in the areas studied to the influences of the local area on development, particularly among males. In other words, studies not designed primarily to examine development appeal to neighborhood-level influences on development in order to explain their findings. These conclusions about neighborhood

influence on development generally emerge from a much closer scrutiny of the social contexts of development made possible by the in-depth approach of case study and qualitative methods (Sullivan, 1998; Yin, 1989).

One exception to the general lack of comparisons across neighborhoods in the ethnographic studies of development is Sullivan's systematic comparison of three groups of criminally active youths in different neighborhoods of New York City. Using this comparative approach, he demonstrated close links between the array of legitimate and illegitimate opportunities in each place and the developmental trajectories of boys who became involved in delinquency and crime. Even though the early stages of involvement were similar in all three areas, youths from the white, working-class area aged out of crime much faster than their black and Hispanic peers living in neighborhoods characterized by racial and ethnic segregation, concentrated poverty, adult joblessness, and single-parent households. The youths from the more disadvantaged areas had less access to employment and more freedom to experiment with illegal activity as a result of lower levels of informal social control in their immediate neighborhoods (Sullivan, 1989).

Neighborhood-Level Concentrations of Developmental Risk Factors

If neighborhood effects are defined as the influence of neighborhood environment on individual development net of personal and family characteristics, then the amount of variation left over to be attributed to neighborhood in a given study can vary a great deal according to the data and methods used. As many researchers note, neighborhood effects may be mediated by personal and family factors (see, e.g., Farrington and Loeber, 1999); however, it is also necessary to examine whether personal and family characteristics are themselves affected by neighborhood environment. To the extent that this is the case, then neighborhoods affect individual development through their effects on such things as the formation of enduring personal characteristics during early childhood and the family environments in which children grow up. From this perspective, efforts such as those described earlier to measure neighborhood effects net of personal and family characteristics may substantially underestimate neighborhood effects as a result of artificially separating personal and family characteristics from those neighborhood environments. Similarly, if the subsets are not separately analyzed, neighborhood effects will be artificially minimized if some, but not all, types of family constellations increase the impact of neighborhood conditions (McCord, 2000).

A number of studies demonstrate neighborhood concentrations of risk factors for impaired physical and mental health and for the development of antisocial behavior patterns. To date, little research has been able

to trace direct pathways from these neighborhood risk factors through child and adolescent development, although some of the larger ongoing studies, such as the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, are collecting the kind of comprehensive data on biological and social aspects of individual development as well as on the characteristics of a large number of ecological areas that could make this kind of analysis possible (Tonry et al., 1991). Nonetheless, existing research does indicate a number of ways in which deleterious conditions for individual development are concentrated at the neighborhood level. Furthermore, the neighborhoods in which they are concentrated are the same ones that have concentrations of serious youth crime. The risks involved begin for individuals in these areas before birth and continue into adulthood. They include child health problems, parental stress, child abuse, and exposure to community violence.

Neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and crime are often also neighborhoods with concentrations of health problems among children. In New York City, for example, there is a high degree of correlation at the neighborhood level of low birthweight and infant mortality with rates of violent death (Wallace and Wallace, 1990). Moffitt (1997) has pointed to a number of conditions prevalent in inner-city neighborhoods that are capable of inflicting neuropsychological damage, including fetal exposure to toxic chemicals, which are disproportionately stored in such areas, and child malnutrition. Thus, even to the extent that some neighborhoods have larger proportions of persons with clinically identifiable physical and psychological problems, these problems may themselves be due to neighborhood conditions. Thus it can be difficult to disentangle individual developmental risk factors from neighborhood risk factors.

Similarly, some parenting practices that contribute to the development of antisocial and criminal behavior are themselves concentrated in certain areas. McLloyd (1990) has reviewed a wide range of studies documenting the high levels of parental stress experienced by low-income black mothers who, as we have already seen, experience an extremely high degree of residential segregation (Massey and Denton, 1993). This parental stress may in turn lead, in some cases, to child abuse, which contributes to subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior (Widom, 1989). Child abuse is also disproportionately concentrated in certain neighborhoods. Korbin and Coulton's studies of the distribution of child maltreatment in Cleveland neighborhoods have shown both higher rates in poorer neighborhoods and a moderating effect of age structure. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, they showed that neighborhoods with a younger age structure experienced higher rates of child maltreatment, as measured by reported child abuse cases and inter-

views in a subset of the neighborhoods, than other neighborhoods with similar average family income levels (Korbin and Coulton, 1997).

Recent research has begun to demonstrate high levels of exposure to community violence across a wide range of American communities (Singer et al., 1995), but the degree of exposure also varies by community and reaches extraordinary levels in some neighborhoods. Studies in inner-city neighborhoods have found that one-quarter or more of young people have directly witnessed confrontations involving serious, life-threatening acts of violence, while even larger proportions have witnessed attacks with weapons (Bell and Jenkins, 1993; Osofsky et al., 1993; Richters and Martinez, 1993; Selner-O'Hagan et al., 1998). Various outcomes of this kind of exposure to community violence have been identified. The most commonly cited of these include depressive disorders and posttraumatic stress syndrome, but some links have also been found to increases in aggressive and antisocial behavior (Farrell and Bruce, 1997). Experimental research has shown a pathway from exposure to violence to states of mind conducive to and associated with aggressive behavior, particularly a pattern of social cognition characterized as hostile attribution bias, in which people erroneously perceive others' behavior as threatening (Dodge et al., 1990).

Taken together, these studies point to a multitude of physical, psychological, and social stressors concentrated in the same, relatively few, highly disadvantaged neighborhood environments. Besides affecting people individually, these stressors may combine with and amplify one another, as highly stressed individuals encounter each other in crowded streets, apartment buildings, and public facilities, leading to an exponential increase in triggers for violence (Bernard, 1990). Agnew (1999), having demonstrated the effects of general psychological strain on criminal behavior in previous research, has recently reviewed a wide range of studies that point to just such an amplification effect at the community level.

Environmental and Situational Influences

Other aspects of the environment that have been examined as factors that may influence the risk of offending include drug markets, availability of guns, and the impact of violence in the media.

The presence of illegal drug markets increases the likelihood for violence at the points where drugs are exchanged for money (Haller, 1989). The rise in violent juvenile crime during the 1980s has been attributed to the increase in drug markets, particularly open-air markets for crack cocaine (Blumstein, 1995; National Research Council, 1993). Blumstein (1995) points out the coincidence in timing of the rise in drug arrests of

nonwhite juveniles, particularly blacks, beginning in 1985, and the rise in juvenile, gun-related homicide rates, particularly among blacks. As mentioned earlier, Blumstein argues that the introduction of open-air crack cocaine markets in about 1985 may explain both trends. The low price of crack brought many low-income people, who could afford to buy only one hit at a time, into the cocaine market. These factors led to an increase in the number of drug transactions and a need for more sellers. Juveniles provided a ready labor force and were recruited into crack markets. Blumstein (1995:30) explains how this led to an increase in handgun carrying by juveniles:

These juveniles, like many other participants in the illicit-drug industry, are likely to carry guns for self-protection, largely because that industry uses guns as an important instrument for dispute resolution. Also, the participants in the industry are likely to be carrying a considerable amount of valuable product—drugs or money derived from selling drugs—and are not likely to be able to call on the police if someone tries to rob them. Thus, they are forced to provide for their own defense; a gun is a natural instrument.

Since the drug markets are pervasive in many inner-city neighborhoods, and the young people recruited into them are fairly tightly networked with other young people in their neighborhoods, it became easy for the guns to be diffused to other teenagers who go to the same school or who walk the same streets. These other young people are also likely to arm themselves, primarily for their own protection, but also because possession of a weapon may become a means of status-seeking in the community. This initiates an escalating process: as more guns appear in the community, the incentive for any single individual to arm himself increases.

Other researchers concur that juveniles responded to the increased threat of violence in their neighborhoods by arming themselves or joining gangs for self-protection and adopting a more aggressive interpersonal style (Anderson, 1990, 1994; Fagan and Wilkinson, 1998; Hemenway et al., 1996; Wilkinson and Fagan, 1996). The number of juveniles who report carrying guns has increased. In 1990, approximately 6 percent of teenage boys reported carrying a firearm in the 30 days preceding the survey (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1991). By 1993, 13.7 percent reported carrying guns (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1995). Hemenway et al. (1996) surveyed a sample of 7th and 10th graders in schools in high-risk neighborhoods in a Northeastern and a Midwestern city. Of these, 29 percent of 10th grade males and 23 percent of 7th grade males reported having carried a concealed gun, as did 12 percent of 10th grade females and 8 percent of 7th grade females. The overwhelm-

ing majority gave self-defense or protection as their primary reason for carrying weapons. Moreover, juveniles who reported living in a neighborhood with a lot of shootings or having a family member who had been shot were significantly more likely to carry a gun than other students. Additional student surveys also have found that protection is the most common reason given for carrying a gun (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1993; Sheley and Wright, 1998).

By studying trends in homicide rates, several researchers have concluded that the increase in juvenile homicides during the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted from the increase in the availability of guns, in particular handguns, rather than from an increase in violent propensities of youth (Blumstein and Cork, 1996; Cook and Laub, 1998; Zimring, 1996). Certainly, assaults in which guns are involved are more likely to turn deadly than when other weapons or just fists are involved. The increase in gun use occurred for all types of youth homicides (e.g., family killings, gang-related killings, brawls and arguments). Furthermore, the rates of nonhandgun homicides remained stable; only handgun-related homicides increased.

Public concern about the role of media in producing misbehavior is as old as concern regarding the socialization of children. Although few believe that the media operate in isolation to influence crime, scientific studies show that children may imitate behavior, whether it is shown in pictures of real people or in cartoons or merely described in stories (Bandura, 1962, 1965, 1986; Maccoby, 1964, 1980). Prosocial as well as aggressive antisocial behavior has been inspired through the use of examples (Anderson, 1998; Eisenberg and Mussen, 1989; Eron and Huesmann, 1986; Huston and Wright, 1998; Staub, 1979). Thus media models can be seen as potentially influencing either risk or protectiveness of environments.

In addition to modeling behavior, exposure to media violence has been shown to increase fear of victimization and to desensitize witnesses to effects of violence (Slaby, 1997; Wilson et al., 1998). Children seem particularly susceptible to such effects, although not all children are equally susceptible. Violent video games, movies, and music lyrics have also been criticized as inciting violence among young people. Cooper and Mackie (1986) found that after playing a violent video game, 4th and 5th graders exhibited more aggression in play than did their classmates who had been randomly assigned to play with a nonviolent video game or to no video game. Anderson and Dill (2000) randomly assigned college students to play either a violent or a nonviolent video game that had been matched for interest, frustration, and difficulty. Students played the same game three times, for a total of 45 minutes, after which they played a competitive game that involved using unpleasant sound blasts against

the rival player. After the second time, measures of the accessibility of aggressive concepts showed a cognitive effect of playing violent video games. After the third time, those who had played the violent video game gave longer blasts of the unpleasant sound, a result mediated by accessibility of aggression as a cognitive factor. The authors concluded that violent video games have adverse behavioral effects and that these occur through increasing the aggressive outlooks of participants.

None of these studies, however, finds direct connections between media exposure to violence and subsequent serious violent behavior. Steinberg (2000:37) summarized the literature on media and juvenile violence by noting: “exposure to violence in the media plays a significant, but very small, role in adolescents' actual involvement in violent activity. The images young people are exposed to may provide the material for violent fantasies and may, under rare circumstances, give young people concrete ideas about how to act out these impulses. But the violent impulses themselves, and the motivation to follow through on them, rarely come from watching violent films or violent television or from listening to violent music . . . . I know of no research that links the sort of serious violence this working group is concerned about with exposure to violent entertainment.”

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DELINQUENCY IN GIRLS

Research on the development of conduct disorder, aggression, and delinquency has often been confined to studies of boys. Many of the individual factors found to be related to delinquency have not been well studied in girls. For example, impulsivity, which has been linked to the development of conduct problems in boys (Caspi et al., 1994; White et al., 1994), has scarcely been studied in girls (Keenan et al., in press).

Behavioral differences between boys and girls have been documented from infancy. Weinberg and Tronick (1997) report that infant girls exhibit better emotional regulation than infant boys, and that infant boys are more likely to show anger than infant girls. This may have implications for the development of conduct problems and delinquency. Although peer-directed aggressive behavior appears to be similar in both girls and boys during toddlerhood (Loeber and Hay, 1997), between the ages of 3 and 6, boys begin to display higher rates of physical aggression than do girls (Coie and Dodge, 1998). Girls tend to use verbal and indirect aggression, such as peer exclusion, ostracism, and character defamation (Bjorkqvist et al., 1992; Crick and Grotpeter, 1995), rather than physical aggression. Research by Pepler and Craig (1995), however, found that girls do use physical aggression against peers, but tend to hide it from adults. Through remote audiovisual recordings of children on a play-

ground, they found the rates of bullying by girls and boys to be the same, although girls were less likely than boys to admit to the behavior in interviews.

Internalizing disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are more frequent in girls and may well overlap with their conduct problems (Loeber and Keenan, 1994; McCord and Ensminger, 1997). Theoreticians have suggested that adolescent females may direct rage and hurt inward as a reaction to abuse and maltreatment. These inward-directed feelings may manifest themselves in conduct problems, such as drug abuse, prostitution, and other self-destructive behaviors (Belknap, 1996).

Whether or not the rate of conduct problems and conduct disorder in girls is lower than that in boys remains to be definitively proven. Girls who do exhibit aggressive behavior or conduct disorder exhibit as much stability in that behavior and are as much at risk for later problems as are boys. Tremblay et al. (1992) found equally high correlations between aggression in early elementary school and later delinquency in boys and girls. Boys and girls with conduct disorder are also equally likely to qualify for later antisocial personality disorder (Zoccolillo et al., 1992).

Delinquency in girls, as well as boys, is often preceded by some form of childhood victimization (Maxfield and Widom, 1996; Smith and Thornberry, 1995; Widom, 1989). Some have speculated that one of the first steps in female delinquency is status offending (truancy, running away from home, being incorrigible), frequently in response to abusive situations in the home (Chesney-Lind and Shelden, 1998). Indeed, Chesney-Lind (1997) has written that status offenses, including running away, may play an important role in female delinquency. In what she refers to as the “criminalization of girls' survival strategies,” Chesney-Lind (1989:11) suggests that young females run away from the violence and abuse in their homes and become vulnerable to further involvement in crime as a means of survival. In one community-based longitudinal study, however, a larger proportion of boys than of girls had left home prior to their sixteenth birthday (McCord and Ensminger, 1997). In a long-term follow-up of a sample of documented cases of childhood abuse and neglect, Kaufman and Widom (1999) reported preliminary results indicating that males and females are equally likely to run away from home, and that childhood sexual abuse was not more often associated with running away than other forms of abuse or neglect. However, the motivation for running away may differ for males and females. For example, females may be running away to escape physical or sexual abuse or neglect in their homes. For boys, running away may be an indirect consequence of childhood victimization or may be part of a larger constellation of antisocial and problem behaviors (Luntz and Widom, 1994).

From the small amount of research that has been done on girls, it appears that they share many risk factors for delinquency with boys. These risk factors include early drug use (Covington, 1998), association with delinquent peers (Acoca and Dedel, 1998), and problems in school (Bergsmann, 1994). McCord and Ensminger (1997) found, however, that, on average, girls were exposed to fewer risk factors (e.g., aggressiveness, frequent spanking, low I.Q., first-grade truancy, early leaving home, and racial discrimination) than were boys.

Delinquent girls report experiencing serious mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. In a study of delinquent girls conducted by Bergsmann (1994), fully half said that they had considered suicide, and some 64 percent of these had thought about it more than once.

In a survey of mental disorders in juvenile justice facilities, Timmons-Mitchell and colleagues (1997) compared the prevalence of disorders among a sample of males and females and found that the estimated prevalence of mental disorders among females was over three times that among males (84 versus 27 percent). The females in the sample scored significantly higher than males on scales of the Milton Adolescent Clinical Inventory, which measure suicidal tendency, substance abuse proneness, impulsivity, family dysfunction, childhood abuse, and delinquent predisposition. Timmons-Mitchell et al. (1997) concluded from these data that incarcerated female juveniles had significantly more mental health problems and treatment needs than their male counterparts.

Teen motherhood and pregnancy are also concerns among female juvenile offenders. Female delinquents become sexually active at an earlier age than females who are not delinquent (Greene, Peters and Associates, 1998). Sexual activity at an early age sets girls up for a host of problems, including disease and teenage pregnancy, that have far-reaching impacts on their lives and health. Teen mothers face nearly insurmountable challenges that undermine their ability to take adequate care of themselves and their families. Dropping out of school, welfare dependence, and living in poor communities are only a few of the consequences of teen motherhood. And the effects are not limited to one generation. Teen mothers are more likely than women who have children in their early 20s to have children who are incarcerated as adults (Grogger, 1997; Nagin et al., 1997; Robin Hood Foundation, 1996).

CONCLUSIONS

Although a large proportion of adolescents gets arrested and an even larger proportion commits illegal acts, only a small proportion commits

serious crimes. Furthermore, most of those who engage in illegal behavior as adolescents do not become adult criminals.

Risk factors at the individual, social, and community level most likely interact in complex ways to promote antisocial and delinquent behavior in juveniles. Although there is some research evidence that different risk factors are more salient at different stages of child and adolescent development, it remains unclear which particular risk factors alone, or in combination, are most important to delinquency. It appears, however, that the more risk factors that are present, the higher the likelihood of delinquency. Particular risk factors considered by the panel are poor parenting practices, school practices that may contribute to school failure, and community-wide settings.

Poor parenting practices are important risk factors for delinquency. Several aspects of parenting have been found to be related to delinquency:

neglect or the absence of supervision throughout childhood and adolescence;

the presence of overt conflict or abuse;

discipline that is inconsistent or inappropriate to the behavior; and

a lack of emotional warmth in the family.

School failure is related to delinquency, and some widely used school practices are associated with school failure in high-risk children. These practices include tracking and grade retention, as well as suspension and expulsion. Minorities are disproportionately affected by these educational and social practices in schools.

Both serious crime and developmental risk factors for children and adolescents are highly concentrated in some communities. These communities are characterized by concentrated poverty. Residents of these communities often do not have access to the level of public resources available in the wider society, including good schools, supervised activities, and health services. Individual-level risk factors are also concentrated in these communities, including health problems, parental stress, and exposure to family and community violence. The combination of concentrated poverty and residential segregation suffered by ethnic minorities in some places contributes to high rates of crime.

Although risk factors can identify groups of adolescents whose probabilities for committing serious crimes are greater than average, they are not capable of identifying the particular individuals who will become criminals.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Delinquency is associated with poor school performance, truancy, and leaving school at a young age. Some pedagogical practices may exacerbate these problems. The available research on grade retention and tracking and the disciplinary practices of suspension and expulsion reveal that such policies have more negative than positive effects. For students already experiencing academic difficulty, tracking and grade retention have been found to further impair their academic performance. Furthermore, tracking does not appear to improve the academic performance of students in high tracks compared with similar students in schools that do not use tracking. Suspension and expulsion deny education in the name of discipline, yet these practices have not been shown to be effective in reducing school misbehavior. Little is known about the effects of these policies on other students in the school. Given the fact that the policies disproportionately affect minorities, such policies may unintentionally reinforce negative stereotypes.

Recommendation: Federal programs should be developed to promote alternatives to grade retention and tracking in schools.

Given that school failure has been found to be a precursor to delinquency, not enough research to date has specifically examined school policies, such as tracking, grade retention, suspension, and expulsion in terms of their effects on delinquent behavior in general. It is important that evaluations of school practices and policies consider their effects on aggressive and antisocial behavior, incuding delinquency. This type of research is particularly salient given the concern over school violence. Research on tracking should examine the effects on children and adolescents in all tracks, not only on those in low tracks.

Recommendation: A thorough review of the effects of school policies and pedagogical practices, such as grade retention, tracking, suspension, and expulsion, should be undertaken. This review should include the effects of such policies on delinquency, as well as the effects on educational attainment and school atmosphere and environment.

Prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and nicotine is associated with hyperactivity, attention deficit, and impulsiveness, which are risk factors for later antisocial behavior and delinquency. Biological insults suffered during the prenatal period may have some devastating effects on development. Consequently, preventive efforts during the pre-

natal period, such as preventing fetal exposure to alcohol and drugs, may have great benefits. Reducing alcohol and drug abuse among expectant parents may also improve their ability to parent, thus reducing family-related risk factors for delinquency.

Recommendation: Federal, state, and local governments should act to provide treatment for drug abuse (including alcohol and tobacco use) among pregnant women, particularly, adolescents.

Most longitudinal studies of delinquent behavior have begun after children enter school. Yet earlier development appears to contribute to problems that become apparent during the early school years. Much remains to be known about the extent to which potential problems can be identified at an early age.

Recommendation: Prospective longitudinal studies should be used to increase the understanding of the role of factors in prenatal, perinatal, and early infant development on mechanisms that increase the likelihood of healthy development, as well as the development of antisocial behavior.

Research has shown that the greater the number of risk factors that are present, the higher the likelihood of delinquency. It is not clear, however, whether some risk factors or combinations of risk factors are more important than other risk factors or combinations in the development of delinquency. Furthermore, the timing, severity, and duration of risk factors, in interaction with the age, gender, and the environment in which the individual lives undoubtedly affect the behavioral outcomes. A better understanding of how risk factors interact is important for the development of prevention efforts, especially efforts in communities in which risk factors are concentrated.

Recommendation: Research on risk factors for delinquency needs to focus on effects of interactions among various risk factors. In particular, research on effects of differences in neighborhoods and their interactions with individual and family conditions should be expanded.

The panel recommends the following areas as needing particular research attention to increase understanding of the development of delinquency:

Research on the development of language skills and the impact of delayed or poor language skills on the development of aggressive and antisocial behavior, including delinquency;

Research on children's and adolescents' access to guns, in particular handguns, and whether that access influences attitudes toward or fear of crime;

Research on ways to increase children's and adolescents' protective factors; and

Research on the development of physical aggression regulation in early childhood.

Research on delinquency has traditionally focused on boys. Although boys are more likely to be arrested than girls, the rate of increase in arrest and incarceration has been much larger in recent years for girls than boys, and the seriousness of the crimes committed by girls has increased.

Recommendation: The Department of Justice should develop and fund a systematic research program on female juvenile offending. At a minimum, this program should include:

Research on etiology, life course, and societal consequences of female juvenile offending;

Research on the role of childhood experiences, neighborhoods and communities, and family and individual characteristics that lead young females into crime; and

Research on the role of psychiatric disorders in the etiology of female juvenile crime, as well as its role as a consequence of crime or the justice system's response.

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 adolescents—trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistance—the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with age—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.

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Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society Proposal

Introduction, theoretical framework, methodology.

Family shapes the basic foundation of a child’s social, emotional, and mental well-being. Good parental nurturing results in well-mannered and industrious children and adolescents, while bad parenting results in a high rate of child delinquency. The family structure can cause delinquency among children and adolescents, particularly those raised by single parents. Single parents have many life challenges and inadequacies that may hinder a child’s proper upbringing. My proposed research question identifies parental factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency by focusing on family structure, parental support socially, emotionally, and economically, and disciplinary actions from single parents. The proposal seeks to establish the relationship between single parenthood and the increase in juvenile delinquency.

Children always crave parental support from both parents to grow more independently and confidently. Being an all-around parent in raising children needs commitment, hard work, and sacrifice to meet all parental needs. Sometimes, the responsibilities are overwhelming and time-consuming for parents leading to less physical and emotional contact with the children. The absence of parental guidance in a child’s growth can cause delinquency and violence. The lack of parental presence and support may lead to other means of filling the gap, such as seeking peer support from external sources, corrupting a child’s behaviour leading to delinquency.

Discipline is an essential factor in the upbringings of responsible citizens. However, children living with single parents tend to get away with many mistakes because the parents may ignore or overlook the mistakes. 1 Other parents avoid scolding or reprimanding a child for fear of losing them to the other spouse in case of separation due to divorce. Such children grow up doing whatever they want regardless of right or wrong. Single parenthood also limits parents from spending quality time with the family leading to emotional detachment. Emotionally detached children can become antisocial and fail to identify societal norms leading to delinquency.

Single parenting leads to the risk of delinquency due to inadequate economic stability to meet the family’s needs. Adolescents may engage in criminal activities to obtain a means of survival and essential needs, which the parent fails to provide. The absence of parental figures can make adolescents engage in substance and drug abuse in their free time which is a crime and can also lead to violence and criminal activities. 2 Children also emulate etiquette and gender roles from their respective parents; girls learn from mothers, and boys learn from fathers. 3 The absence of one parent can cause a child to lose focus and self-control, leading to delinquency.

An increase in Juvenile delinquency presents a crucial problem in society since teenagers are determinants of the future world. Studies relating bad parenting to delinquency have always focused on parental methods that may cause delinquency, such as authoritative and permissive approaches to bringing up children. However, with the rising numbers of broken families and single parenthood, children are getting less parental attention, emotional connection, and discipline from the sole parent. Single parenthood has also resulted in more children in the streets due to economic hardships, where they learn delinquent activities for survival. I propose addressing child delinquency from the perspective of social and family background to understand the risks associated with a child’s nature of upbringing. 4 Addressing the issue is significant in offering vital information to criminal justice on the appropriate approaches of intervening and preventing juvenile delinquents from broken families.

This study will base on the theory of social control in criminal activities. The theory states that a given community or family must have strong social bonds that help conform to societal norms. 5 The study will examine single parenthood in relation to three key components of social theory: belief, involvement, and attachment. The aspect of belief argues that individual upbringing contributes to their involvement in a crime. 5 A good upbringing leads to following rules, while a poor upbringing leads to delinquency. Attachment refers to the bonds of a relationship where stronger bonds lead to conformity while weak bonds in a relationship contribute to deviance from the law. Finally, involvement is how individuals engage in good behaviour and ethics. Individuals who spend more time doing the right thing are less likely to break the law than people who have their way. The absence of attachment, involvement, and belief will establish the argument that single parenthood is a significant predictor of juvenile delinquency.

This study will adopt a qualitative research design because it uses a subjective approach during the inquiry. Qualitative research allows an extensive exploration into the issue, giving more insight and information regarding parenting and delinquency. The study will occur in three juvenile institutions in Saudi Arabia through a random selection of 100 participants, including both genders. Data will be collected using open-ended questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, allowing a deeper inquiry into the possibility of single parenting causing delinquency. Data analysis will involve a narrative analysis of the respondent’s feedback and primary data, coded using axial coding.

Jacobsen SK and Zaatut A, “Quantity or Quality: Assessing the Role of Household Structure and Parent-Child Relationship in Juvenile Delinquency” (2020) 43 Deviant Behavior 30

Rathinabalan I and Naaraayan S. A, “Effect of Family Factors on Juvenile Delinquency” (2017) 4. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics 2079

Mwangangi RK, “The Role of Family in Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency” (2019) 07 Open Journal of Social Sciences 52.

Sari N and Nurhayati SR, “Parent and Child Relations in the Perspective of Adolescents with Juvenile Delinquency” (2019) 2 Psychological Research and Intervention 36

Triplett RA, The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology (John Wiley & Sons, Inc 2018

1 Shannon K. Jacobsen and Amarat Zaatut, ‘Quantity or Quality: Assessing the Role of Household Structure and Parent-Child Relationship in Juvenile Delinquency’ (2020) 43 Deviant Behavior.
2 Indiran Rathinabalan and Sridevi A. Naaraayan, ‘Effect of Family Factors on Juvenile Delinquency’ (2017) 4 International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics.
3 Rosemary Kakonzi Mwangangi, ‘The Role of Family in Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency’ (2019) 07 Open Journal of Social Sciences.
4 Nourmarifa Sari and Siti Rohmah Nurhayati, ‘Parent and Child Relations in The Perspective of Adolescents with Juvenile Delinquency’ (2019) 2 Psychological Research and Intervention.
5 Triplett RA, The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, May 24). Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/single-parenthood-and-juvenile-delinquency-in-modern-society/

"Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society." IvyPanda , 24 May 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/single-parenthood-and-juvenile-delinquency-in-modern-society/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society'. 24 May.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society." May 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/single-parenthood-and-juvenile-delinquency-in-modern-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society." May 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/single-parenthood-and-juvenile-delinquency-in-modern-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society." May 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/single-parenthood-and-juvenile-delinquency-in-modern-society/.

Jennifer Morse: Parents or Prisons
Juvenile Delinquency
The Problem of Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile Delinquency: Causes and Intervention
Social Learning Theory and juvenile delinquency
Social Disorganization Theory and Delinquent Behavior
Juvenile Delinquency, Its Factors and Theories
Factors Associated With Juvenile Delinquency
Theories of Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile Delinquency is a Product of Nurture
Juvenile Delinquency and Affecting Factors
Juvenile Law and Juvenile Sentencing
Role of Family in Reducing Juvenile Delinquency
Transferring a Defendant to an Adult Court
The Relationship Between Gender and Delinquency

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IMPACT OF PARENTING STYLES ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, A CASE STUDY OF YOUNG PERSONS HOME KATAKO, JOS NORTH LGA

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Juvenile delinquency, welfare, justice and therapeutic interventions: a global perspective

Susan young.

1 Imperial College London, London, UK

2 Broadmoor Hospital, Crowthorne, UK

Richard Church

3 South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

This review considers juvenile delinquency and justice from an international perspective. Youth crime is a growing concern. Many young offenders are also victims with complex needs, leading to a public health approach that requires a balance of welfare and justice models. However, around the world there are variable and inadequate legal frameworks and a lack of a specialist workforce. The UK and other high-income countries worldwide have established forensic child and adolescent psychiatry, a multifaceted discipline incorporating legal, psychiatric and developmental fields. Its adoption of an evidence-based therapeutic intervention philosophy has been associated with greater reductions in recidivism compared with punitive approaches prevalent in some countries worldwide, and it is therefore a superior approach to dealing with the problem of juvenile delinquency.

Recent years have seen sustained public and academic interest in criminality and mental health, with attention often focused on antisocial behaviour by children and adolescents. The scale of the problem of juvenile delinquency has provoked mixed responses from governments and the media across the world, with calls for improved rehabilitation and support for juvenile offenders competing with voices advocating more punitive approaches. 1 Meanwhile, decades of rigorous academic scrutiny have shed light on the complex and diverse needs of children who come into conflict with the law. 2 – 5 Much of the growing body of literature on juvenile offenders shows considerable overlap between criminological, social and biomedical research, with a consensus emerging around the significance of a developmental understanding of the emergence of juvenile delinquency.

Importantly, juvenile offenders have consistently been identified as a population that suffers from a markedly elevated prevalence and severity of mental disorder compared with the general juvenile population. 6 , 7 Meeting the needs of these young offenders presents practical and ethical challenges concerning treatment and management, including liaison with other agencies.

What is juvenile delinquency?

Who counts as juvenile.

Juvenile delinquency is a term commonly used in academic literature for referring to a young person who has committed a criminal offence, although its precise definition can vary according to the local jurisdiction. The specific reasons underlying these differences are unclear, but they may arise from the lack of an agreed international standard. 8

A ‘juvenile’ in this context refers to an individual who is legally able to commit a criminal offence owing to being over the minimum age of criminal responsibility, but who is under the age of criminal majority, when a person is legally considered an adult. The minimum age of criminal responsibility varies internationally between 6 and 18 years, but the age of criminal majority is usually 18 years.

In some cases individuals older than 18 years may be heard in a juvenile court, and therefore will still be considered juveniles; indeed, the United Nations (UN) defines ‘youth’ as between 15 and 24 years of age. The term ‘child delinquents’ has been used in reference to children below the age of 13 who have committed a delinquent act, 9 although elsewhere ‘children’ are often defined as being under 18 years of age. The term ‘young offenders’ is broad, and can refer to offenders aged under 18 years or include young adults up to their mid-20s.

What is a crime?

A ‘delinquent’ is an individual who has committed a criminal offence. Delinquency therefore encompasses an enormous range of behaviours which are subject to legislation differing from one jurisdiction to another, and are subject to changes in law over time. Whereas acts of theft and serious interpersonal violence are commonly considered to constitute criminal offences, other acts including alcohol consumption and sexual behaviour in young people are tolerated to very differing degrees across the world. Sometimes these differences arise as a consequence of historical or cultural factors, and they may be underpinned by traditional religious laws, such as in some Middle Eastern countries. Some offences may be shared between jurisdictions but be enforced to differing standards – for instance, ‘unlawful assembly’, often used to prevent riots, is applied in Singapore to young people meeting in public in groups of five or more as part of police efforts to tackle youth gangs. Furthermore, ‘status offences’ – acts that would be permissible in adults but criminalised in children, such as consumption of alcohol or truancy – not only vary between jurisdictions, but contribute to discontinuity when comparing juvenile delinquency with adult populations in the same jurisdiction.

Lack of clarity can also arise in jurisdictions where a young offender is processed via a welfare system rather than a youth justice process. Countries with a high minimum age of criminal responsibility may not technically criminalise young people for behaviour that would normally be prosecuted and therefore classed as ‘delinquent’ elsewhere.

Not all incarcerated juveniles are ‘delinquent’, since some may be detained pre-trial and may not be convicted of an offence. Even if convicted, it would be wrong to assume that every ‘juvenile delinquent’ meets criteria for a diagnosis of conduct disorder; offences vary considerably and may not be associated with a broad repertoire of offending behaviour. Also, most ‘juvenile delinquents’ do not pose an immediate risk of violence to others, and the vast majority of convicted juveniles serve their sentences in the community.

To meet the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder requires evidence of a persistent pattern of dissocial or aggressive conduct, such that it defies age-appropriate social expectations. Behaviours may include cruelty to people or animals, truancy, frequent and severe temper tantrums, excessive fighting or bullying and fire-setting; diagnosis of conduct disorder can be made in the marked presence of one of these behaviours. 10

Overall, the term ‘juvenile delinquent’ is used extensively in academic literature, but requires some care. It can be a potentially problematic term, and in some contexts can strike a pejorative tone with misleading negative assumptions. For several years the UN has used the phrase ‘children in conflict with the law’ to describe the breadth of the heterogeneous group of individuals under the age of 18 who have broken the law or are at risk of doing so.

General principles of juvenile justice

Welfare v. justice models.

The sentencing of an individual convicted of a criminal offence is largely driven by three key considerations: retribution (punishment), deterrence and rehabilitation. In the case of juvenile offenders the principle of rehabilitation is often assigned the greatest weight. 11

Special consideration for juveniles within the criminal justice system is not a new concept. In Roman law, the principle of doli incapax protected young children from prosecution owing to the presumption of a lack of capacity and understanding required to be guilty of a criminal offence. Most countries have some provision for special treatment of children who come into conflict with the law, however, the degree to which this is provided varies across the world. 1 , 12 In some countries a ‘welfare’ model prevails, which focuses on the needs of the child, diagnosis, treatment and more informal procedures, whereas other countries favour a ‘justice’ model, which emphasises accountability, punishment and procedural formality.

Belgium is frequently cited as an example of a country with a strong welfare process, supported by a high minimum age of criminal responsibility of 18 years. Similarly, France built a strong welfare reputation by placing education and rehabilitation at the centre of youth justice reforms in the 1940s. New Zealand in 1989 established the widely praised system of Family Group Conferencing as an integral part of youth justice, with a focus on restoration of relationships and reduction of incarceration that would be considered part of a welfare approach. In contrast, the UK and the USA have traditionally been associated with a justice model and low age of criminal responsibility – 10 years in England and Wales, and as low as 6 years in several US states.

Within welfare or justice models, a young person may at some point be ‘deprived of liberty’ – defined as any form of detention under official authorities in a public or private location which the child is not permitted to leave. Locations in which children may be deprived of liberty include police stations, detention centres, juvenile or adult prisons, secure remand homes, work or boot camps, penitentiary colonies, locked specialised schools, educational or rehabilitation establishments, military camps and prisons, immigration detention centres, secure youth hostels and hospitals. 13

Between the less and more punitive systems

The UN supports the development of specialised systems for managing children in conflict with the law. When the first children's courts were set up in the USA in the 1930s, they were widely praised as a progressive system for serving the best interests of the child. Although informality was championed as a particular benefit, in the 1960s substantial concerns arose about due process and the protection of the legal rights of minors. The subsequent development of formal juvenile courts occurred in the context of a continuing ethos of rehabilitation of young people, with a move away from incarceration of juveniles in the 1970s, especially in Massachusetts and California. However, following a marked peak in juvenile offending statistics during the 1980s and 1990s, public and political opinion swung firmly in a more punitive direction. This was accompanied by legal reforms that increased the severity of penalties available to juvenile courts and lowered the age threshold for juveniles to be tried in adult criminal courts.

When the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force in 1990, the USA was not a signatory owing to 22 states permitting capital punishment of individuals who had committed their crimes as juveniles. It is reported that 19 juvenile offenders were executed in the USA between 1990 and 2005. Although this number may represent a small percentage of the total who faced the death penalty in the USA during that period, the practice was widely criticised by international bodies and organisations. 14 A landmark ruling in the US Supreme Court 15 outlawed the execution of juvenile offenders in the USA, but to date a small number of countries worldwide still implement this practice, sometimes as a result of religious laws.

However, it would be wrong to assume that welfare systems are automatically preferable to a juvenile justice approach, since welfare arrangements can be equally coercive in terms of deprivation of liberty of juveniles. They may lack due process, safeguards for obtaining reliable evidence from young people, processes for testing evidence, and procedures for scrutiny or appeal following disposal.

Trends in youth crime

The USA witnessed a dramatic increase in arrest rates of young people for homicide and other violent crimes in the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes referred to as the ‘violence epidemic’. 16 The ensuing moral panic led to harsh and punitive policy changes in juvenile justice and, although official statistics document a subsequent fall of 20% in court case-loads between 1997 and 2009, victimisation surveys have indicated a degree of continuity in high levels of offending, consistent with a reported increase in juvenile offending between 2000 and 2006. 17

In common with the USA and several other high-income countries, the UK also experienced a rise in juvenile offending in the 1980s and 1990s, but figures from the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales appear to indicate a general improvement in recent years. Between 2009/2010 and 2014/2015 a 67% reduction has been observed in the number of young people entering the juvenile justice system for the first time, a 65% reduction in the number of young people receiving a caution or court disposal and a 57% reduction in the number of young people in custody. 18 These figures support an overall decrease in juvenile offending noted since the early 1990s. 19

Youth crime figures from Australia have documented a 4% reduction in the overall number of young offenders in 2013/2014, 20 although the number of violent offences committed by young people in the urbanised and densely populated region of Victoria has increased by 75% between 2000 and 2010. 21

The Nordic countries have witnessed an increase in the number of law-abiding youths from 1994 and 2008. 22 In Sweden, both objective levels of juvenile crime 23 and self-reported involvement in juvenile crime 24 have fallen between 1995 and 2005. Similarly in Finland, where, despite fluctuating trends in juvenile drug use, juvenile property and violent crime is reported to have decreased between 1992 and 2013. 25

To summarise, whereas regional and annual trends in juvenile offending are observed and expected, a global trend characterised by decreased juvenile offending appears to have emerged in recent years. Indeed, UN data from a sample of 40 countries lend support to this conclusion, indicating a decrease in the proportion of juveniles suspected (10.9% to 9.2%) and convicted (7.5% to 6%) of crime between 2004 and 2012, respectively. 26

Juvenile gang membership

Influence on crime involvement.

One of the features of urbanisation across the world has been the rise of youth gangs, groups of young people often defined by geographical area, ethnic identity or ideology; recent reports indicate a rise in groups with extremist views. Explanatory models for the rise in youth gangs include factors such as economic migration, loss of extended family networks, reduced supervision of children, globalisation and exposure to inaccessible lifestyle ‘ideals’ portrayed in modern media.

Authorities in Japan attributed a surge in serious youth crime in the 1990s primarily to juvenile bike gangs known as ‘bosozoku’, who were deemed responsible for over 80% of serious offences perpetrated by juveniles, putatively bolstered by a crackdown on yakuza organised crime syndicates. 27 Although difficult to quantify, gang involvement appears to feature in a large proportion of juvenile offences, and there is evidence that gang membership has a facilitating effect on perpetration of the most serious violence including homicide. 28

Mental health

Compared with general and juvenile offender populations, juvenile gang members exhibit significantly higher rates of mental health problems such as conduct disorder/antisocial personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). 29 Gang members, compared with non-violent men who do not belong to a gang, are far more likely to utilise mental health services and display significantly higher levels of psychiatric morbidity, most notably antisocial personality disorder, psychosis and anxiety disorders. 30 Gang membership has also been positively correlated with an increased incidence of depressed mood and suicidal ideation among younger gang members. 31 Prevalence of ADHD is significantly greater in incarcerated youth populations (30.1%) than in general youth population estimates (3–7%), 32 therefore it may be reasonable to expect a similarly increased prevalence in juvenile gang members. ADHD has also been associated with a significantly increased risk of comorbid mood/affective disorder. 33

Forensic child and adolescent psychiatric services

Increased awareness of constitutional and environmental factors that contribute to juvenile offending has strengthened a public health perspective towards the problem, and in the UK entry into the youth justice system has been adopted as an indicator of general public health. 34

Dictionaries frequently define ‘forensic’ as meaning ‘legal’, implying a relationship with any court of law. Indeed, many forensic psychiatrists, particularly in child and adolescent services, undertake roles that encompass multiple legal domains relevant to mental health, including criminal law, family and child custody proceedings, special educational tribunals, and immigration or extradition matters.

Specialist forensic psychiatric services vary considerably between countries, 35 but usually forensic psychiatrists assess and treat individuals in secure psychiatric hospitals, prisons, law courts, police stations and in the community under various levels of security, supervision and support. In some countries there has been a trend towards forensic psychiatrists working almost exclusively with courts of law, providing independent specialist opinion to assist the court.

In the UK, forensic child and adolescent psychiatry has emerged as a clinical subspecialty. Some services are based in specialist secure hospitals for young people and cater for the relatively small number of high-risk young offenders with the most severe mental disorders. In the absence of such specialist resources, young people may be managed in suboptimal environments such as juvenile prisons, secure residential placements or secure mental health wards for adults, or even fail to receive treatment at all.

In light of growing evidence-based interventions for juvenile offenders within a public health framework, 36 the role of child and family mental health services may increase over time. Aside from direct clinical roles, practitioners in forensic child and adolescent psychiatry are also well placed to work with a wide range of partner agencies on the planning and delivery of broader interventions for the primary and secondary prevention of juvenile delinquency.

Prevalence of mental health problems among juvenile offenders

Rates of mental health problems among juvenile offenders are significantly higher than in their non-offender peers, with two-thirds of male juvenile offenders in the USA suggested as meeting criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder. 37 One in five juvenile offenders is estimated to suffer severe functional impairment as a result of their mental health problems. 38 Paradoxically, these needs are often unmet, 39 , 40 despite evidence of increased contact with mental health services, particularly among first-time juvenile offenders. 41 , 42 Of additional concern are the reported associations between mental health problems and mortality in incarcerated juveniles, 43 including an elevated suicide rate for males. 44 Mental health problems must be a target in interventions for juvenile offenders; however, treatments which focus solely on clinical problems are unlikely to result in benefit for criminogenic outcomes. 45 There is therefore a clear need for effective interventions which address both the clinical and criminogenic needs of these individuals.

Evidence-based treatments for mental health problems

Treatment of ptsd.

Estimates regarding the prevalence of PTSD among juvenile offenders suggest that 20 to 23% meet the clinical criteria, 46 , 47 with prevalence rates significantly higher among females than males (40% v . 17%). 46 Moreover, with 62% experiencing trauma within the first 5 years of life 47 and up to 93% experiencing at least one traumatic event during childhood or adolescence, 48 this should be a target for intervention.

Cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) is regarded as the most effective intervention for adults with PTSD 49 and also has demonstrated efficacy for juvenile non-offenders. 50 , 51 There is limited evidence suggesting a significant reduction in self-reported symptoms of PTSD following group-based CBT in male juvenile offenders, 52 and of an adapted version of CBT, cognitive processing therapy, 53 also resulting in a significant reduction in self-reported symptoms of PTSD and depression compared with waitlist controls. 54

A trauma-focused emotion regulation intervention (TARGET) has received preliminary empirical support for use in this population. TARGET resulted in nearly twice as much reduction in PTSD symptom severity as treatment as usual (TAU), 55 in addition to significant reductions in depression, behavioural disturbances and increased optimism. 56

Mood/anxiety disorders and self-harm

Juvenile offenders in the UK present with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders (67% of females, 41% of males), self-harm (11% of females, 7% of males) and history of suicide attempts (33% of females, 20% of males). 57 Similarly high prevalence has also been observed cross-culturally, namely in the USA, 37 , 58 Switzerland 59 and Finland. 60

Despite such high prevalence, there appears to be a paucity of high-quality evaluations regarding the effectiveness of interventions for juvenile offenders with mood and/or anxiety disorders, or problems with self-harm. However, the limited evidence that is available suggests that group-based CBT may aid symptom reduction. 61 Recovery rates for major depressive disorder following group-based CBT are over double those for a life skills tutoring intervention (39% v . 19%, respectively), although no significant difference was noted at 6- or 12-month follow-up. CBT also resulted in significantly greater improvements in self- and observer-reported symptoms of depression and social functioning. 62

However, group-based CBT is not reported to be significantly different from TAU in reduction of self-harm, 63 whereas individual CBT is not significantly different from TAU in outcomes for depression, anxiety, conduct disorder or PTSD. 64 Yet recruitment to and retention in intervention seems good, suggesting that CBT is feasible to implement in juvenile offender populations. 64

Evaluations of alternative interventions have posited muscle relaxation as effective in improving juvenile offenders' tolerance of frustration. 65 Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has also been reported to significantly reduce incidences of physical aggression in a juvenile offender population 66 and among juvenile non-offenders expressing suicidal ideation. 67 It significantly reduced serious behavioural problems and staff punitive actions among juvenile offenders within a mental health unit, although no similar significant reductions were observed for those without mental health problems. 68

Evidence-based treatments for conduct disorder: family approaches

Relationships with family and peers are recognised as key factors in the criminogenic profile of juvenile offenders. 69 Multisystemic therapy (MST) is a family-focused intervention targeting characteristics related to antisocial behaviour, including family relationships and peer associations, 70 with evidence from US and UK studies suggesting MST is a beneficial intervention for juvenile offenders. When compared with conventional services offered by juvenile offending services, MST was associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of reoffending, 71 maintained 2 and 4 years post-treatment. 72 , 73 Offenders engaging in MST are reported to be significantly less likely to become involved in serious and violent offending. 73 , 74 Significant improvements have also been observed in both self- and parent-reported delinquency, 74 family relations and interactions, 73 and home, school, community and emotional functioning. 71 A cost offset analysis of MST among UK juvenile offenders suggested that combining MST and conventional services provides greater cost savings than conventional services alone, as a result of its positive effects on recidivism. 75 Qualitative impressions of MST from juvenile offenders and their parents indicate that key components of a successful delivery of MST include the quality of the therapeutic relationship and ability to re-engage the offender with educational systems. 76

Some evidence also exists regarding the efficacy of MST when delivered to non-offender antisocial juvenile populations outside the USA and the UK. Compared with TAU, MST resulted in a significantly greater increase in social competence and caregiver satisfaction, and a significant reduction in referrals for out-of-home placements, in Norwegian juveniles exhibiting serious behavioural problems. 77 However, no significant difference between MST and TAU was reported in outcomes for antisocial behaviour and psychiatric symptoms in Swedish juvenile offenders. 78 MST was also found to have no significant benefit over TAU in outcomes including recidivism in a sample of Canadian juvenile offenders. 79 These differing outcomes have been posited as the result of barriers in transferring MST from US and UK populations owing to differing approaches to juvenile justice between countries (i.e. a welfare v . justice approach). 78 The heterogeneous nature of studies concerning MST in juvenile offender populations prevent a firm conclusion being drawn as to its superiority over alternative interventions, although this does not diminish the positive outcomes which have been observed. 80

Substance misuse

Motivational interviewing represents a promising approach for juvenile offenders, particularly as a treatment for substance misuse. 81 Group-based motivational interviewing has received positive feedback from participants when implemented with first-time juvenile alcohol or drug offenders, 82 and compared with TAU, juvenile offenders in receipt of motivational interviewing have greater satisfaction and display lower, though not statistically significant, rates of recidivism at 12-months post-motivational interviewing. 83 There is therefore preliminary evidence for the acceptability and feasibility of motivational interviewing for substance-misusing juvenile offenders, but future research regarding long-term outcomes is warranted. To date, motivational interviewing for difficulties faced by juvenile offenders beyond that of substance misuse does not appear to have received much research attention. Juvenile offenders are known for their difficulty to engage in rehabilitative services, therefore further investigation of the effectiveness of motivational interviewing in encouraging engagement is warranted.

Preliminary investigations have also developed a conceptual framework for the delivery of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) to incarcerated substance-misusing juveniles, with qualitative impressions suggesting this is a potentially feasible and efficacious intervention. 84 Although literature regarding the effectiveness of MBI in juvenile offenders is scarce, qualitative feedback has indicated positive reception of this style of intervention, with particular improvements in subjective well-being reported by juvenile participants. 85

Employment and education

Engaging juvenile offenders with education and skills-based training is an important component of successful rehabilitation, with positive engagement in meaningful activities associated with improvements in areas such as self-belief 86 and protection against future participation in criminal activities. 87 It is concerning therefore that an evaluation of the use of leisure time over a 1-week period by probationary juvenile offenders in Australia indicated only 10% of this time was spent engaging in productive activities, such as employment or education, with 57% used for passive leisure activities, a level 30% higher than that of their non-offender peers. 88

Efforts to engage juvenile offenders in vocational and/or occupational activities have shown benefits in a number of areas. A specialised vocational and employment training programme (CRAFT) emphasising practical skills was evaluated against conventional education provision to juvenile offenders in the USA. Over a 30-month follow-up period, those engaged in CRAFT were significantly more likely to be in employment, to have attended an educational diploma programme and to have attended for a significantly longer period of time. 89 Benefits have also been reported with regard to risk of reoffending, with an after-school programme in the USA incorporating practical community projects, educational sessions and family therapy resulting in a significant reduction in recidivism at 1-year follow-up. 90

Qualitative investigations of US juvenile offenders suggest there is not a lack of interest in pursuing education among this population, but rather a disconnection with educational systems when education providers are perceived not to care about students' progress. 91 Ensuring education providers are perceived as proactive and caring in this regard may therefore be an important consideration for efforts to engage juvenile offenders with educational systems. Significant barriers to engagement include difficulties in obtaining accurate information regarding the offender's educational history, in addition to identifying community-based education providers willing to accept previously incarcerated juveniles on their release. 92

Language and communication

Difficulties with language and communication skills appear to be prevalent among juvenile offenders, with estimates of those falling into the poor or very poor categories ranging from 46 to 67%; overall, up to 90% of juvenile offenders demonstrated language skills below average. 93 Specifically, high rates of illiteracy are reported in this population, 94 with evidence to suggest that an awareness of such problems among juvenile offenders themselves is associated with dissatisfaction and poor self-esteem. 95 These difficulties may act as barriers to engagement in therapeutic interventions, particularly those delivered in group settings, as well as re-engagement with educational systems. Awareness of the challenges these young people face with regard to confidence and ability to communicate is important, and potential involvement of a speech and language therapist could be considered. Preventing deficits in language and communication through effective schooling and appropriate support in the early years of life may serve as an aid to effective engagement in rehabilitative interventions, and may also mitigate the risk of engagement in criminal activities in the first instance.

Delivery of therapeutic services

Common challenges to a therapeutic youth justice pathway.

There are common obstacles to smooth care pathways between different parts of systems, such as in transitions between secure settings and the community, between prisons and secure psychiatric settings, and between child and adult services. In some jurisdictions individuals can only be treated pharmacologically against their will in a hospital setting, a safeguard which limits the extent to which individuals can be treated in prison, but there is still great scope for intervention by prison mental health teams in juvenile prisons.

Factors associated with good outcomes

A meta-analysis has revealed three primary factors associated with effective interventions for juvenile offenders: a ‘therapeutic’ intervention philosophy, serving high-risk offenders, and quality of implementation. 96 These findings are consistent with factors posited as correlating with good outcome in residential centres for troubled adolescents and juvenile offenders: good staff-adolescent relations, perception of staff as pro-social role models, positive peer pressure, an individualised therapeutic programme approach, developmentally appropriate programmes and activities, clear expectations and boundaries, and placement locations which allow for continued family contact. 97 , 98

In the community, coercive styles of engagement have been found to be less successful at achieving adherence among juvenile offenders than a client-centred approach. 99

Factors associated with poor outcomes

‘Scared Straight’ programmes expose juveniles who have begun to commit offences to inmates of high-security prisons, yet these approaches have been discredited due to evidence that risk of recidivism may in fact increase following such exposure. 100 Similarly poor outcomes have been observed in programmes modelled on military boot camps, in which harsh discipline is considered to be of therapeutic benefit, 101 and initiatives such as curfew, probation and hearing juvenile cases in adult court were also shown to be ineffective in reducing recidivism. 13

Over recent years it has been repeatedly demonstrated that exposure to juvenile court itself appears to have a detrimental effect on juvenile offending. 102 – 104 This may be partially explained by effects of labelling, stigma and negative self-image associated with a criminal conviction, but also the practical consequences of sentences, including assortment of delinquent peers in community or prison sentences. Incarceration presents several additional harms, including disturbance of care and pro-social relationships, discontinuity in education, association with delinquent peers, and exposure to violence. Half of detained young offenders in the UK reported victimisation during their current prison term, 57 while 12% of incarcerated youth in the USA reported sexual victimisation in the previous year. 105 International agreements state that deprivation of liberty (such as juvenile prison) should be used as a last resort and for the shortest time necessary, so should be reserved for the highest-risk offenders. The cost of juvenile antisocial behaviour is known to be high, and to fall on many agencies. 106 The current climate of austerity in public services demands that any interventions should be not only effective, but also cost-effective, raising a clear challenge – and opportunity – for the implementation of interventions for this population of vulnerable young people. For example, parenting programmes have demonstrated sustained benefits for this population, 107 , 108 with economic analysis indicating gross savings of £9288 per child over a 25 year period. 109 Considered together with wider costs of crime, these gross savings exceed the average cost of parenting programmes (£1177) by a factor of approximately 8 to 1.

Conclusions

Many argue that we have a long way to go before arriving at ‘child friendly’ juvenile justice. 110 Around the world there are variable and inadequate legal frameworks that are not age-appropriate, there is a lack of age-appropriate services and establishments, and a lack of a specialist workforce, leading to challenges around training and supervision to work with this vulnerable population. In the UK and other high-income countries worldwide, forensic child and adolescent psychiatry is a multifaceted discipline incorporating legal, psychiatric and developmental fields. This approach has navigated clinical and ethical challenges and made an important contribution to welfare and justice needs by its adoption of an evidence-based therapeutic intervention philosophy.

Declaration of interests S.Y. has received honoraria for consultancy, travel, educational talks and/or research from Janssen, Eli Lilly, Shire, Novartis, HB Pharma and Flynn Pharma.

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For Young Offenders in Maine, Justice Varies With Geography

Maine has tried to send fewer teenagers to prison, emphasizing rehabilitation programs instead. But the rural north of the state shows the effort has played out unevenly.

The highway to Caribou in Aroostook County, Maine, near the Canadian border. Credit...

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By Callie Ferguson

Photographs by Ashley L. Conti

Callie Ferguson spent one year examining the juvenile justice system in Maine as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship .

March 28, 2024

Aroostook County, in Maine’s far north, is the largest county east of the Mississippi, a sparsely populated region of fields and forests with just two small cities and about 50 smaller towns. Police chiefs describe their jurisdictions as sleepy, with little serious crime.

Even so, the county has sent a disproportionate number of adolescents in recent years to the state’s only youth prison.

Between 2017 and 2023, there were 20 commitments to Long Creek Youth Development Center from Aroostook — nearly double the number from York County, which has more than three times as many residents at the other end of the state.

Aroostook was also an outlier for using short prison terms, known as “shock” sentences, to punish young offenders, handing them down at some of the highest rates statewide before the practice began to wane.

York County, which includes wealthy coastal communities and former mill towns that help make up Maine’s largest metropolitan area, rarely imposed such sentences.

For more than a decade, Maine has emphasized rehabilitation in its approach to juvenile justice, sending fewer teenagers to prison. The change is in keeping with a national movement to consign fewer youth to the criminal justice system, especially correctional settings, which a growing body of research shows can often do more harm than good at preventing delinquency.

But the differences between Aroostook and York Counties show that the effort has played out unevenly, resulting in justice by geography. The disparity appears to stem from philosophical differences over the appropriate response to teenagers who get in trouble, the varying availability of services across the state and the unequal distribution of lawyers and caseloads, according to interviews with defense attorneys, law enforcement officials and former corrections officials.

A church and low-rise buildings with a wooded mountain behind them.

York stood out even beyond its low commitment rate. Adolescents there were far less likely to end up with a felony record than anywhere except for neighboring Cumberland County, according to a data analysis by The New York Times and The Bangor Daily News. Between 2017 and 2022, those counties reduced 93 percent of felony cases that resulted in a guilty plea to misdemeanors. At the low end, two central Maine counties reduced them only about half the time; in Aroostook, that rate was 64 percent.

William Francis, a juvenile community corrections officer in Aroostook for more than 30 years, said his supervisors at the Maine Department of Corrections were concerned about the commitment rates in his county and used to tell him that practices should be the same everywhere. “‘What happens in Aroostook should be what happens in York,’” he repeated in an interview. Given the variables in each location, he recalled thinking, “Be real.”

But such differences are troubling to many involved in the juvenile system. “Justice should not be defined by where in the state a child lives,” said Sarah Branch, a former juvenile prosecutor who is now a defense lawyer and director of the Youth Justice Clinic at the University of Maine School of Law. “What we have right now are barriers for some children that don’t exist for others.”

The system needs better oversight to ensure consistent, effective outcomes, according to juvenile law and policy experts as well as a 2020 state-commissioned assessment.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers often can’t compare outcomes for similar offenses across jurisdictions, leaving them to rely on anecdotal information. While the Corrections Department publishes general statistics online about Long Creek admissions and juvenile criminal referrals from police agencies, it can be difficult to obtain more granular information because much of it is confidential or isn’t collected in formats that are easy to analyze. And the state court system, which is paper-based, is constrained by its limited digital data.

No independent entity holds the system accountable for measuring and improving outcomes, said Jill Ward, who leads the Center for Youth Policy and Law at the university. Unlike the other New England states, Maine does not have an ombudsman who can investigate confidential cases, analyze data and issue public reports about successes and failures.

The 2020 assessment recommended that state officials develop a plan to address a range of problems, including geographic inequities. But that never happened. Ms. Ward, who helped lead the task force that produced the report, called that “a missed opportunity.”

Ben Goodman, a spokesman for Gov. Janet Mills, did not address the oversight issues in the system but described a commitment to diversion programs throughout the state. “The administration recognizes there is more work to do,” he said, citing challenges including “the difficulty of the work” and staffing shortfalls.

In a statement, the Corrections Department said it had a limited ability to control for disparities in the juvenile system because “various actors” — police, prosecutors, judges — influence cases.

Samuel W. Prawer, the department’s director of government affairs, said his agency had made “significant efforts” to invest in mental health and mentorship programs for youth, and acknowledged that these were needed in every part of the state. But such efforts “rely on appropriate funding,” he said.

“While we do not have control over the judicial system’s decisions, we will continue to do our best within our budget resources to expand access to community and home-based services and support diversion away from incarceration where deemed appropriate,” Mr. Prawer said.

Justice by geography isn’t unique to Maine. Across the United States, the idiosyncrasies of local courts affect case outcomes, and variation is especially likely in the juvenile system with its emphasis on individualized treatment. Last year, a nonprofit advocacy group in Massachusetts identified wide-ranging differences depending on which police department, district attorney and court handled a case. Similarly, a 2005 study of Missouri’s juvenile system found that teenagers’ odds of confinement changed with where they lived.

Most juvenile crime in Maine involves misdemeanors like assault, theft and property destruction. But the rates at which adolescents pleaded or were found guilty varied widely, according to the Times/BDN analysis. York County had the lowest rate, at 14 percent, while Aroostook had the highest, at nearly 60 percent.

In Aroostook, a 16-year-old killed an older man during a drug-related robbery in 2015, one of eight murders by minors in the state since 2010, but local law enforcement officials said in interviews that serious juvenile crime was rare.

“Major situations? Like down south?” said Michael DeLena, the police chief in Fort Kent, a town of about 2,500 along the Canadian border. “We don’t see that. It’s more small things.” The cases he considered most worrisome involved repeat offenders, typically charged with theft, property destruction, drunken driving or fighting.

Tanya Pierson, a longtime juvenile prosecutor with the York County District Attorney’s Office, said her colleagues did handle more serious crimes, including those committed with guns, such as robbery, a shooting and making a threat with a firearm.

That is true in neighboring southern counties as well. Police in Lewiston, the state’s second-largest city, have responded to multiple shootings in recent years where youth were charged. Last month, Portland police officers arrested two teenage boys accused of robbing a woman at knifepoint while she sat in her parked car. And three 17-year-olds were recently sent to Long Creek after a rolling gunfight in Portland; police said they and other teenagers were involved in a cocaine-trafficking ring.

Mr. Francis, who retired in 2021, primarily covered northern Aroostook during his time as a community corrections officer. He was known for his “tough-love” approach, and toward the end of his career, he said, he butted heads with his supervisors over the department’s shifting policies, especially concerning commitments.

During that period, the state took a more progressive approach and worked to reduce youth incarceration. But the push to lower commitments also came from mounting public pressure after Long Creek, located in South Portland, had become mired in controversy following a teen suicide , chronic staff shortages , riots and a vote by lawmakers to shut the prison down, which Ms. Mills vetoed .

Since then, the administration has been faulted for not adopting a comprehensive plan to fill severe gaps in community services statewide for troubled youth, develop alternative secure sites to Long Creek and stabilize the prison. Tumult at the site has continued, with several major disturbances since November, and on Friday, it was announced that the prison’s superintendent of two years was stepping down for unspecified personal reasons.

While the number of adolescents from Aroostook sent to Long Creek has fallen since the beginning of the pandemic, which significantly drove down the prison’s population, the county still had the highest rate of commitments in Maine from 2017 to 2023, according to the Times/BDN analysis of data provided by the Corrections Department. The county also recorded 26 shock sentences, the same as Cumberland County, which is the state’s largest and has the highest volume of juvenile cases. (Other counties stood out for high rates of shock sentences, including Androscoggin, home to Lewiston, and rural Somerset in central Maine.)

District Attorney Todd Collins said sentences to Long Creek from Aroostook in recent years usually resulted from multiple probation violations that couldn’t be resolved out of court. “The threat of jail is to motivate the child,” he said in an interview.

Some of the underlying crimes involved theft, assault, stealing a car, drug possession, trespassing and making a threat, in one case with a weapon. In a few serious cases, such as one involving rape, he said his office viewed commitment to Long Creek as a more rehabilitative alternative to charging the teen in adult court.

Mr. Francis, who is a former police officer and member of the Maine Army National Guard, recalled that a few years ago, his bosses told him that they were concerned that Aroostook County was an outlier for its high commitment numbers and urged him to find more creative ways to support youth in the community.

“I got called on the carpet more than once,” Mr. Francis said.

Corrections officials discouraged his use of more traditional law enforcement tools, such as drug testing, he said, which could identify probation violations and lead to incarceration. He refused to refer adolescents to a restorative justice program — a diversion effort that would make offenders confront the harm they caused — because he was skeptical of its value. He felt strongly about following through with consequences if teenagers violated probation, he added, worrying that a lack of action would increase their chances of ending up in the much harsher adult criminal justice system.

For example, he recalled, a boy on probation was sent to Long Creek after stealing thousands of dollars from his family’s business. In other cases, like commitments involving sexual assault, there were concerns about people’s safety. “Remember the victims,” he said.

“Incarceration was always a last resort,” Mr. Francis said, agreeing with his supervisors on that goal, if not entirely on the philosophy behind it. “Punishment works. It’s become a bad word.”

And sometimes, he said, a commitment could save a life. He described the case of a young heroin addict who kept violating her probation by using and selling drugs. Worried she might die, he pushed to send her to Long Creek, the only locked facility available. She later thanked him, he said.

Mr. Francis was one of four community corrections officers working in Aroostook. It’s not clear how much his views contributed to the county’s relatively high commitment rate. While he made recommendations to prosecutors and judges, they were the ultimate decision makers.

The judge who most often oversaw his cases had more liberal views. In an interview, David Soucy, who presided over District Court in northern Aroostook for 11 years until retiring in 2021, called incarceration and punitive approaches to delinquency “wasteful and ineffective and honestly cruel.”

The commitments he ordered, he said, “always had to do with either a lack of available resources or a secure home for people who were seriously out of control.” Sometimes “it was a matter of preservation — to keep them alive,” he said.

Mr. Soucy lamented what many police officers, prosecutors, families and advocates have also pointed out: The state’s pressure to keep adolescents out of Long Creek has not coincided with an equally forceful effort to build up rehabilitation programs in their communities or intervention efforts that would reduce their risk of entering the justice system in the first place.

For instance, Aroostook County, one of the state’s poorest , once had at least three group homes for teenagers who needed supervision, Mr. Soucy said, but now it has none. During the pandemic, the county’s last residential treatment facility for children closed and reopened as a youth homeless shelter and transitional living program, addressing a growing need but not filling the gap for those who require more care.

It’s difficult to find therapists in the county, which is one of only two without an intensive in-home behavioral health program aimed at keeping youth out of the justice system; it’s hard to scale a costly service over such a large area. Many young offenders also have drug problems, but the state’s only residential program is far away, close to Portland, with few slots. A lack of public transportation in most rural counties further limits access to health services as well as education and work opportunities.

Even for commitments, Mr. Soucy had no choice. The state used to operate a second youth prison in Penobscot County, which borders Aroostook, but it stopped holding minors in 2015. For a while, the former judge said, he at least hoped that troubled youth would get help at Long Creek, but he became disillusioned after reports about its deteriorating conditions.

He tried not to let the state’s concern about Aroostook’s commitment numbers influence his decisions from the bench, he said, warning that disparities in a system with relatively small numbers could be insignificant or misleading. “It’s a desperate situation,” Mr. Soucy said. “You either did nothing, or this draconian alternative of incarceration away from home in southern Maine.”

The counties in the south of the state — little more than an hour from Boston — have more juvenile cases, allowing for more specialization in juvenile law among defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges, which could affect how cases are resolved.

For instance, Ms. Pierson, the York County prosecutor, and Michelle McCulloch, a veteran juvenile prosecutor in Cumberland County, both said their offices were highly motivated to reduce felonies as part of plea deals. Teenagers who have been found guilty of a felony — which becomes public record — may have to disclose that on applications for school, jobs or professional licenses, and it typically bars them from enlisting in the military, Ms. Pierson said.

“If our goal is rehabilitation and for them to become a productive member of society, that’s the best way to do it: through education, having a job where they can support themselves,” she said. As a prosecutor, she must protect public safety and consider input from victims, she said, but added that she and some of her colleagues viewed commitment to Long Creek as a failure of earlier interventions and alternatives to prison.

More rural courts, however, see as few as a dozen juvenile cases a year. And while there are not nearly enough lawyers to represent poor defendants in Maine, the problem is acute in rural areas. Last year, the state created a special team of public defenders to combat the shortage in Aroostook, Penobscot and Washington Counties.

Sharon Craig, a defense lawyer who represents youth at Long Creek, recalled being assigned a client from Penobscot, where she doesn’t typically practice. She was surprised that the boy had been committed for nonviolent offenses that would not usually warrant such a penalty in southern Maine courts. He was also young, only 13, she said.

A month after he arrived, she said, staff members at Long Creek took steps to transfer him to a residential treatment facility.

Justin Mayo and Irene Casado Sanchez contributed reporting. Julie Tate contributed research.

This article was reported in partnership with Big Local News at Stanford University.

Callie Ferguson reports on Maine’s juvenile justice system as part of a Times fellowship focused on local investigations. More about Callie Ferguson

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JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM PART 5
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: FAMILIES AND DELINQUENCY

COMMENTS

Bad Parenting and Juvenile Delinquency
Psychological and emotional effects resulting from bad parenting can also contribute to juvenile delinquency. Children who experience neglect, abuse, or constant criticism may develop low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and anger. These negative emotions can manifest in impulsive behaviors, aggression, and difficulty managing their ...
Good parents, bad parents: Rethinking family involvement in juvenile
This article proposes a new theoretical model for studying family involvement in youth delinquency cases in juvenile court. It argues that before we can assess the family's effect on case outcomes, we must first have a clearer understanding about the process by which family involvement is formed to consider the myriad factors that go beyond the idea of a 'good' or 'bad' parent.
The Relationship Between Parenting and Delinquency: A Meta-analysis
Parents of young people are often blamed for the delinquent behavior of their children. In some courts parents are even penalized for the antisocial conduct of their children (e.g., Bessant and Hil 1998; Drakeford 1996; Dundes 1994).Although lay as well as scholarly theories assume that a link between parenting and delinquency exists, clear conclusions concerning the magnitude of this link are ...
The Influence of Family Structure on Delinquent Behavior
The relationship between family structure and delinquency has been extensively studied across a variety of different fields. In general, research suggests that parental divorce is associated with an array of negative consequences including psychological problems, reduced mental health, reduced academic performance and achievement, and increased involvement in juvenile delinquency (Amato, 2001 ...
The Relations Between Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency
and to assess some ofthe possible underlying causes ofthis behavior. Juvenile delinquency is defined as major or minor lawbreaking by youth under the age of 18 (Berger, 2000). Some examples of major lawbreaking are murder, rape, robbery, and theft. Minor lawbreaking refers to misdemeanors and status offenses.
The Relationship between Parental Influence and Juvenile Delinquency
The police and/or the courts can then decide to split the punishment between the juvenile and the parents upon learning that parents have a hand in the crime. For instance, while the court sentences the juvenile to imprisonment, or orders him or her to carryout community service, it may penalize the parents as a way of discouraging others from ...
PDF WHY IS "BAD" PARENTING CRIMINOGENIC? Implications From Rival Theories
10.1177/1541204005282310Youth Violence and Juvenile JusticeUnnever et al. / Bad-Parenting Theories ... In this regard, the research on "bad" parenting as a cause of crime is experiencing a
Parenting and Delinquency
The concept of parenting has biological, legal, and social aspects. The notion of a biological parent has been complicated in recent years by advances in reproductive technology, which, in turn, have affected the legal status of parenting. The notion of juvenile delinquency has a complicated history.
(PDF) Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency ...
Tapia et al. (2018) studied the effects of parenting styles on delinquency, adjusted for juvenile gender. The study uses data from the 1977 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97), including ...
Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency: Exploring Gendered
Independent of parenting style, boys have higher delinquency levels than girls. The strength and magnitude of this relationship is nearly identical in separate equations for mothers and fathers. Parental attachment was not a significant protective factor against delinquency for either mothers or fathers.
Effect of Bad Parenting on Juvenile Delinquency: A Reflection
Parents should up bring their children with love, care, affection and proper guidance. Ignoring or punishing a child during early childhood, will surely lead him on the path of delinquency ...
Risk and Protective Factors and Interventions for Reducing Juvenile
Juvenile delinquency is a pressing problem in the United States; the literature emphasizes the importance of early interventions and the role of the family in preventing juvenile delinquency. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, PudMed, and Scopus, we included 28 peer-reviewed articles in English between January 2012 and October 2022.
Parental Incarceration and Juvenile Delinquency: The Role of Gender
Results found that parental incarceration overall increased the risk of juvenile. delinquency and that female children are at greater risk of delinquency if their mothers were. incarcerated. Overall, the empirical results suggest that the gender of the parent and child matter. in influencing delinquent behavior.
Why is "Bad" Parenting Criminogenic? Implications From Rival Theories
1. Similar to Feld's (1999) use of the phrase "bad kids" in his analysis of policies affecting the processing of youths in the juvenile justice system, we use the term "bad" parenting as a parsimonious, if not poignant, way to convey the thrust of our project. Of course, we set this term off in quotation marks to indicate our realization that this it is a linguistic device, not a ...
The Development of Delinquency
The effect of family size on delinquency was reduced when parents' criminality was taken into account. Page 78 Share Cite. Suggested Citation:"The Development of Delinquency." National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. ... The rise in violent juvenile crime during the 1980s has been attributed to the increase in drug markets ...
Family Instability in Childhood and Criminal Offending during the
Abstract. The structure and stability of families have long stood as key predictors of juvenile delinquency. Boys from "broken homes" experience a higher prevalence of juvenile delinquency than those from intact families (Rebellon 2002, Wells and Rankin 1991). Unresolved is whether the consequences of frequently disrupted family contexts ...
Single Parenthood and Juvenile Delinquency in Modern Society
The absence of parental guidance in a child's growth can cause delinquency and violence. The lack of parental presence and support may lead to other means of filling the gap, such as seeking peer support from external sources, corrupting a child's behaviour leading to delinquency. Discipline is an essential factor in the upbringings of ...
Good parents, bad parents: Rethinking family involvement in juvenile
Conclusion. This article has argued for a new conceptualization of family involvement in juvenile delinquency cases that takes an interactional and longitudinal approach to capture the mechanisms by which parents choose to engage, disengage, or reengage with the youth's case as it progresses through the court process.
(Doc) Impact of Parenting Styles on Juvenile Delinquency, a Case Study
1.5 Hypothesis: Ho: There is no significant difference in parenting style on juvenile delinquency H1: There is a significant difference in parenting style on juvenile delinquency 1.6 Significant of the Study: When this research gets completed as planned, it will be of great importance to Students (adolescent), Parents, Psychology, Government ...
(PDF) Perception on The Role of Parenting Style on Juvenile Delinquency
The present study examines the role of parenting style on juvenile delinquency, using 170 adolescents with behavioural issues who were place at government remand homes Lagos Nigeria. Simple random ...
Juvenile's Delinquent Behavior, Risk Factors, and Quantitative
Juvenile delinquency is a habit of committing criminal offenses by an adolescent or young person who has not attained 18 years of age and can be held liable for his/her criminal acts. Clinically, it is described as persistent manners of antisocial behavior or conduct by a child/adolescent repeatedly denies following social rules and commits ...
Juvenile delinquency, welfare, justice and therapeutic interventions: a
Abstract. This review considers juvenile delinquency and justice from an international perspective. Youth crime is a growing concern. Many young offenders are also victims with complex needs, leading to a public health approach that requires a balance of welfare and justice models. However, around the world there are variable and inadequate ...
For Young Offenders in Maine, Justice Varies With Geography
Most juvenile crime in Maine involves misdemeanors like assault, theft and property destruction. But the rates at which adolescents pleaded or were found guilty varied widely, according to the ...