Category: Books and Chapters

To make real progress in gang control, especially with prevention programs that focus on the youngest gang members and those at risk of gang involvement, researchers and practitioners must cooperate to build comprehensive interventions using frameworks that are theoretically, conceptually, and administratively sound.

This chapter reviews the cost-benefit literature on juvenile crime reduction programs, and proposes four program models that should be investigated for their potential cost-effectiveness: mentoring programs, teen courts, juvenile drug courts, and systemic reform strategies.

Elected officials throughout the U.S. are gradually dismantling the juvenile justice system and replacing it with a pseudo-criminal system, one that emphasizes mandatory sentences and formal, adversarial procedures. Is the separate, juvenile justice system still feasible? If not, what can replace it?

Probation and parole are essential components of the juvenile and criminal (adult) justice systems.

Rather than simply responding punitively to the criminal behavior of youth, we try to resolve the problems that generate criminal behavior – but whose problems? We Americans are biased in how we identify problems and choose solutions. We like to explain our social problems in a way that conforms to a predetermined set of affordable solutions.

Edited by Thomas Bernard, Serious Delinquency features a survey approach to the major issues in delinquency and the juvenile justice system. Coverage is both broad and deep, yet presented accessibly. Topics include patterns of offending and victimization, predictors, theoretically driven correlates, and a wide range of issues in the operations of the juvenile justice system.

Edited by Thomas Bernard, Serious Delinquency features a survey approach to the major issues in delinquency and the juvenile justice system. Coverage is both broad and deep, yet presented accessibly. Topics include patterns of offending and victimization, predictors, theoretically driven correlates, and a wide range of issues in the operations of the juvenile justice system.

We do not know whether juvenile drug courts are more effective than traditional juvenile courts in reducing substance abuse among young offenders. Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers should think carefully about the role drug courts should play in the juvenile justice system.

Jeffrey A. Butts (2002). The Juvenile Court. In The Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice (Second Edition). Joshua Dressler (Editor). New York: Macmillan Reference (Volume 3, pp. 937-947). Introduction Juvenile courts in the United States are legally responsible for young people who are arrested by the police or otherwise accused of breaking the criminal laws of their […]