juvenile delinquency research paper introduction

Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice (2001)

Chapter: introduction, introduction.

Juvenile crime is one of the nation's serious problems. Concern about it is widely shared by federal, state, and local government officials and by the public. In recent years, this concern has grown with the dramatic rise in juvenile violence that began in the mid-1980s and peaked in the early 1990s. Although juvenile crime rates appear to have fallen since the mid-1990s, this decrease has not alleviated the concern. Many states began taking a tougher legislative stance toward juveniles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period during which juvenile crime rates were stable or falling slightly, and federal reformers were urging prevention and less punitive measures. Some of the dissonance between the federal agenda and what was happening in the states at that time may have been caused by significant changes in legal procedures that made juvenile court processes more similar—though not identical—to those in criminal (adult) court. The main response to the most recent spike in violent juvenile crime has been enactment of laws that further blur distinctions between juvenile courts and adult courts. States continued to toughen their juvenile crime laws in recent years, making sentencing more punitive, expanding allowable transfers to criminal (adult) court, or doing away with some of the confidentiality safeguards of juvenile court. Many such changes were enacted after the juvenile violent crime rate had already begun to fall. The rehabilitative model embodied in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, focusing on the needs of the young offender, has lost ever more ground over the past 20 years to punitive models that focus mainly on the offense committed. These puni-

tive policies have had a disproportionate impact on some minority groups, particularly black youngsters, an important issue that is explored in depth in Chapter 6 .

Crime policies in the United States have been moving in the direction of treating juveniles as adults, even though many young people continue to grow up in settings that “fail to provide the resources, the supports, and the opportunities essential to a healthy development and reasonable preparation for productive adulthood” (National Research Council, 1993a:2)—settings that put young people at high risk for delinquency. In 1997, 40 percent of all those living below the poverty level in the United States were under the age of 18 (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). Structural changes in society, including fewer two-parent homes and more maternal employment, have contributed to a lack of resources for the supervision of children's and adolescents' free time.

Government policy on juvenile delinquency must often struggle with the appropriate balance of concern over the healthy development of children and adolescents who violate the law and a public desire to punish criminals. This tension between rehabilitation and punishment when dealing with children and adolescents who commit crimes results in an ambivalent orientation toward young offenders. Criminal acts must be suppressed, condemned, and punished. Nevertheless, children and adolescents who commit criminal acts must be educated and supported in a growth process that should be the objective of government policy for all young people, including young offenders.

A number of cognitive and social features of childhood and adolescence influence the content of juvenile crime policy. Historically, children under the age of seven have been considered below the age of reason, and therefore unable to formulate the criminal intent necessary to be held accountable for criminal offenses. In practice, children younger than age 10 are rarely involved in the juvenile justice system. Arrests of those younger than 10 years old account for less than 2 percent of all juvenile arrests. By the age of 16 or 17, most adolescents are deemed to have sufficient cognitive capacity and life experience to be held accountable for intended wrongful acts. How to deal appropriately with those who commit crimes between the ages of 10 and 17 is the issue faced in juvenile crime policy. Adolescence is a period of dating, driving, and expanding social networks—all choices that can produce positive or negative consequences for the adolescent and the community. Public policies in the areas of education, medical care, alcoholic beverage control, and juvenile crime reflect beliefs that adolescents have not acquired the abilities or capacities necessary for adult status. Creating the appropriate public policy for a period of semiautonomy is no small task (Zimring, 1982). To

further complicate the matter, crime rates peak in mid- to late adolescence, making policy toward young offenders of special importance.

To best answer the questions of how to deal with young offenders requires knowledge of factors in the individual, family, social settings, and community that influence the development of delinquent behavior; of the types of offenses committed by young people; and of the types of interventions that can most efficiently and effectively prevent offending in the first place or prevent its recurrence. This study reviews literature in all of these areas to provide an objective view of juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system in the United States.

CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT: NOT JUST LITTLE ADULTS

What is often missing from discussions of juvenile crime today is recognition that children and adolescents are not just little adults, nor is the world in which they live the world of adults. Physical, emotional, and cognitive development continue throughout adolescence. Although young people can approach decisions in a manner similar to adults under some circumstances, many decisions that children and adolescents make are under precisely the conditions that are hardest for adults—unfamiliar tasks, choices with uncertain outcomes, and ambiguous situations (see, for example, Beyth-Marom and Fischhoff, 1997; Cohn et al., 1995). Further complicating the matter for children and adolescents is that they often face deciding whether or not to engage in a risky behavior, such as taking drugs, shoplifting, or getting into a fight, in situations involving emotions, stress, peer pressure, and little time for reflection.

Young people are liable to overestimate their own understanding of a situation, underestimate the probability of negative outcomes, and make judgments based on incorrect or incomplete information (Quadrel et al., 1993). Although adults are also prone to the same misperceptions, children's and adolescents' lack of experience increases their vulnerability. Quadrel et al. (1993) found that high-risk adolescents (with legal and substance abuse problems, recruited from group homes) were more likely than middle-class youngsters to have incorrect information about risks, while being extremely confident in their information.

Emotions can affect decision making for both adolescents and adults. When people are experiencing positive emotions, such as excitement, happiness, love (as adolescents often do when with groups of their peers), they tend to underestimate the possibility of negative consequences to their actions. When experiencing negative emotions, such as anger, jealousy, sadness, people tend to focus on the near term and lose sight of

the big picture. This is particularly relevant for adolescents, who have been found to experience wider and more rapid mood swings than adults (Larson et al., 1980; Larson and Lampman-Petraitis, 1989; Larson and Richards, 1994).

Studies of young people's understanding of legal processing and the consequences of various legal choices, such as forfeiting the right to remain silent or to have an attorney, show differences between those younger and older than about 15 years (Grisso, 1997). Those under age 15 often misunderstand the concept of a right, in general, and of Miranda rights, in particular. They foresee fewer alternative courses of action in legal proceedings and tend to concentrate on short-term rather than long-term consequences (Grisso, 1980; 1981). For example, younger youth often misconstrue the right to remain silent, believing it means they should be quiet until they are told to talk. Nor do they completely understand the right to have an attorney present, without charge, before they talk (Abramovitch et al., 1995; Grisso, 1981). These misunderstandings raise concerns about children's and young adolescents' competence to stand trial in adult court. Children and adolescents from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and those with low IQs fare worse in understanding the legal process and their rights than do other children and adolescents of comparable ages (Grisso, 1997). Furthermore, experience with the justice system does not ensure that young people fully understand the process, their rights, or the implications of the decisions they make. Both Grisso (1981) and Lawrence (1983) have found that adolescent delinquents had much poorer understanding of their rights than did adult defendants.

Emerging research using magnetic resonance imaging of the brain demonstrates the cognitive and emotional differences between adolescents and adults. Children and adolescents process emotionally charged information in the part of the brain responsible for instinct and gut reactions. Adults process such information in the “rational” frontal section of the brain (Baird et al., 1999). Children and adolescents may be physiologically less capable than adults of reasoning logically in the face of particularly strong emotions. In a recent study, Thompson et al. (2000) found that the brain continues to develop and change through at least midadolescence, with the most active parts of the brain changing during development. These new insights on brain development may have implications for holding children and adolescents criminally responsible in the same way as adults and raise concerns about initiatives to transfer younger and younger defendants to adult courts.

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE 1

Looking at the policies of other countries provides some perspective on criminal justice in the United States. An international study of 15 countries—Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland—notes that all have special provisions for young criminals in their justice systems, although some (such as Denmark, Russia, and Sweden) have no special courts for juveniles. Table 1-1 depicts some of the differences among countries, showing the range in variability for the minimum age of criminal responsibility, the age at which full responsibility as an adult can be assumed, the type of court that handles young people committing crimes, whether such young people can be tried in courts that also try adults, the maximum length of sentencing for a juvenile, and policies regarding incarcerating juveniles with adults.

The United States was not alone in seeing a dramatic increase in violent crime by juveniles in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many European countries and Canada experienced increases in their rates of violent crime, particularly among juveniles (Hagan and Foster, 2000; Pfeiffer, 1998). It is difficult to compare rates across countries, because legal definitions of crime vary from country to country. For example, in Germany, assault is counted as a violent crime only if a weapon is used during the commission of the crime, whereas in England and Wales, the degree of injury to the victim determines whether or not an assault counts as a violent crime. Crime is also measured differently in each country. For example, the United States commonly relies on numbers of arrests to measure crime. In Germany, Austria, and Italy, among other countries, crime is measured by the number of cases solved by police (even if the offender has been apprehended) (Pfeiffer, 1998). Nevertheless, trends in juvenile violent crime appeared similar in many developed countries in the 1980s and early 1990s, 2 although the rates were different.

The United States has a high violent crime rate—particularly for homicide—in comparison to other countries, although property crime rates, particularly burglary, are higher than U.S. rates in Canada, England and Wales, and The Netherlands (Hagan and Foster, 2000; Mayhew and White, 1997). In 1994, the violent crime arrest rate (includes homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape) for 13- to 17-year-olds in the United

TABLE 1-1 International Comparisons of Juvenile Justice Systems

States was nearly 800 per 100,000 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1995). In England and Wales, about 600 per 100,000 14- to 16-year-olds were convicted or cautioned by the police for violent crimes (homicide, assault, robbery, and rape) in 1994. In Germany, 650 per 100,000 14- to 17-year-olds and in The Netherlands 450 per 100,000 12- to 17-year-olds were suspects of violent crime in 1994 (Pfeiffer, 1998).

Comparing how different countries deal with juvenile offenders is equally challenging. Countries differ in the ages of young people considered legal juveniles, in how juvenile courts are organized, and in the types of institution used to sanction juvenile offenders. As Table 1-1 shows, the minimum age for being considered criminally responsible varies from 7 years (in Switzerland and the Australian state of Tasmania) to 16 (in Belgium and Russia). The age of full criminal responsibility (i.e., the age at which an offender is automatically handled as an adult) is 18 in most of the countries studied by Weitekamp et al. (1999), but is as low as 16 in some Australian states and is 20 in Japan. In the United States, both minimum and maximum ages of juvenile court jurisdiction vary by state, with most states having no minimum age (although in practice, children younger than 10 are seldom seen in juvenile courts). The maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction is younger in many U.S. states than in the other countries studied, with 3 states having a maximum age of 15, 10 of 16, and the remaining states having a maximum age of 17.

At the same time that states and the federal government in the United States have been moving toward treating juvenile offenders more like adult criminals, many other countries retain a strong rehabilitative stance. The 1988 Youth Court Law of Austria, for example, describes juvenile offending as a normal step in development for which restorative justice, not punishment, is the appropriate response. The Belgium Youth Court Protection Act specifies that the only measures that can be imposed on a juvenile are for his or her care, protection, and education. In New Zealand, since 1989, Family Group Conferences have been used to replace or supplement youth courts for most of the serious criminal cases. In the early 1980s, England and Wales moved toward community-based sanctions for young offenders and away from institutional placements. This trend was reversed in the 1990s, however, when England and Wales reacted to the upswing in juvenile violence in a manner similar to the United States, focusing on the offense, rather than the offender. The U.K. Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 made it easier to place offenders younger than 15 years in juvenile correctional facilities and extended the maximum length of allowable sentences. The U.K. Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 moved the English juvenile justice system even further toward a punitive, offense-based model.

Neither Sweden nor Denmark uses a separate juvenile court, but youthful immaturity is considered a mitigating factor in deciding their criminal responsibility. In Denmark, maximum punishments well below those available for adults are specified in law for juveniles 15 and older; juveniles under the age of 15 may not be punished, but may be referred to a social welfare agency. In Sweden, imprisonment may only be imposed on juveniles under exceptional circumstances, and even then, the sentences imposed are shorter than for adults.

The United States has a very high overall rate of incarceration. At 645 per 100,000, the U.S. incarceration rate is second only to that of Russia at 685 per 100,000 (Walmsley, 1999). Although adequate juvenile incarceration figures do not exist in the United States, the incarceration rate for homicides committed by juveniles is illustrative of the difference in incarceration rates. In 1992, 12.5 people per 100,000 were incarcerated in the United States for homicides committed as juveniles. Comparable numbers in other countries are 2.3 per 100,000 in The Netherlands, 1.6 per 100,000 in Italy, and 1.3 per 100,000 in Germany (Pfeiffer, 1998). Some of the differences in juvenile homicide incarceration rates are likely to be due to differences in homicide commission rates. In none of the 15 countries surveyed by Weitekamp et al. (1999) can a juvenile who commits a crime be executed, whereas this practice is allowed in the United States.

CHARGE TO THE PANEL

The Panel on Juvenile Crime: Prevention, Treatment, and Control was asked to identify and analyze the full range of research studies and datasets that bear on the nature of juvenile crime, highlighting key issues and data sources that can provide evidence of prevalence and seriousness; race, gender, and class bias; and impacts of deterrence, punishment, and prevention strategies. The panel was further asked to analyze the factors that contribute to delinquent behavior, including a review of the knowledge on child and adolescent development and its implications for prevention and control; to assess the current practices of the juvenile justice system, including the implementation of constitutional safeguards; to examine adjudication, detention and waiver practices; to explore the role of community and institutional settings; to assess the quality of data sources on the clients of both public and private juvenile justice facilities; and to assess the impact of the deinstitutionalization mandates of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 on delinquency and community safety.

To meet this charge, the study panel and staff gathered information in a number of ways. Relevant research studies were identified through

targeted searches of UnCover, Medline, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), and the National Criminal Justice Research Service (NCJRS). The panel met six times between June 1998 and October 1999 to discuss data availability and research findings, identify critical issues, analyze the data and issues, seek additional information on specific concerns, formulate conclusions and recommendations, and develop this report. Four of these meetings were preceded by workshops at which experts presented information on selected topics and engaged in discussions with panel members. Workshops were held on education and delinquency, juvenile justice system issues, developmental issues relevant to delinquency, and racial disparity in the juvenile justice system. (See Appendix E for workshop agendas.) In addition to the workshops, Howard Snyder, research director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, spent part of one meeting discussing relevant datasets with the panel members. The panel commissioned three papers: “International Comparison of Juvenile Justice Systems ” by Elmar Weitekamp, Hans-Juergen Kerner, and Gernot Trueg; “Police Encounters with Juvenile Suspects” by Robert Worden and Stephanie Myers; and “The Indeterminancy of Forecasts of Crime Rates and Juvenile Offenses ” by Kenneth Land and Patricia McCall. Several members of the panel made site visits to juvenile detention and correctional facilities in Texas and New York. Study panel members and staff also consulted informally with various experts between meetings.

The charge to the panel was extremely broad, covering many topics that merit books unto themselves, and indeed some of the areas have been the subject of more than one recent book. The panel chose to provide a broad overview of juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system, touching on all the topics in its charge, but going into various levels of depth depending on the amount and quality of data available. In organizing its plan for the study, the panel focused on answering several questions:

What have been the major trends in juvenile crime over the past 20 to 30 years, and what can be predicted about future trends?

What is the role of developmental factors in delinquent behavior and how do families, peers, communities, and social influences contribute to or inhibit that behavior?

What responses are in place to deal with juvenile crime today, are they developmentally appropriate, and do they work?

This report reviews the data and research available to answer these questions, suggests areas that require additional research, and makes recommendations about policies for dealing with child and adolescent offenders.

DEFINITIONS USED IN THIS REPORT

The terms juvenile and delinquency (or delinquent ) have specific legal meanings in state and federal law. In this report, however, the panel uses the term juvenile 3 in its general sense, referring to anyone under the age of 18, unless otherwise specified. The terms young person, youngster, youth, and child and adolescent are used synonymously with juvenile. For many of the analyses of crime trends in Chapter 2 , juvenile refers to those between the ages of 10 and 17, because those under the age of 10 are seldom arrested. We use the term adolescent to refer specifically to young people between the ages of 13 and 17.

The term delinquency 4 in this report refers to acts by a juvenile that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult, as well as to actions that are illegal only because of the age of the offender. The report uses the term criminal delinquency to refer specifically to the former and status delinquency to refer specifically to the latter. Criminal delinquency offenses include, for example, homicide, robbery, assault, burglary, and theft. The term juvenile crime is used synonymously with criminal delinquency. Status delinquency offenses include truancy, running away from home, incorrigibility (i.e., habitually disobeying reasonable and lawful commands of a parent, guardian, or custodian; also referred to in various statutes as unruly, uncontrollable, or ungovernable behavior), and liquor law violations. In some states, status delinquents are referred to the child welfare or social service systems, while in others status delinquents are dealt with in the juvenile justice system.

PLAN OF THE REPORT

Following this introduction, Chapter 2 discusses the datasets commonly used to measure juvenile crime rates, examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. The chapter then discusses the trends in juvenile crime rates over the past several decades and how trends differ depending on the dataset employed. Differences in crime rates and

types of offense by sex and race are noted. The chapter ends with a discussion of forecasting juvenile crime rates.

Chapter 3 examines factors related to the development of antisocial behavior and delinquency. Several other recent reports (Loeber et al., 1998; Rutter et al., 1998) have extensively reviewed the research on many of these factors, particularly as they relate to the development of serious, violent offending. In this report we have attempted to supplement these other reports rather than duplicate their literature reviews. In addition, this report does not confine its discussion to serious, violent offending.

Chapters 4 and 5 cover responses to the problem of youth crime. Chapter 4 focuses on preventive interventions aimed at individuals, peer groups, and families, interventions delivered in schools, and community-based interventions. Chapter 5 describes the juvenile justice system process in the United States and discusses treatment and intervention programs delivered through the juvenile justice system.

Chapter 6 examines the issue of racial disparity in the juvenile justice system, discussing explanations that have been put forth to explain that disparity and the research support for those explanations.

The panel's conclusions and recommendations for research and policy can be found at the end of each chapter.

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.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

Juvenile Delinquency

Theory, Research, and the Juvenile Justice Process

• © 2020
• Latest edition
• Peter C. Kratcoski 0 ,
• Lucille Dunn Kratcoski 1 ,
• Peter Christopher Kratcoski 2

Sociology/Justice Studies, Kent State University, Tallmadge, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Tallmadge, USA

Williams, Welser & Kratcoski LLC, Kent, USA

• Provides an overview of major topics related to Juvenile Delinquency for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students
• Includes quantitative and qualitative research findings, with new interviews and discussions of the experiences of child care professionals and juvenile justice practitioners
• Provides an interpretation of theory to practice in the criminal justice system
• Explores recent discussion of children as victims, such as non-fault children who are victims of abuse, neglect, and at-risk situations such as violence and bullying
• Incorporates international perspectives on juvenile justice and delinquency, in addition to addressing changes in the characteristics of delinquents, changes in laws, and the influence of social media and electronic communications devices on juvenile delinquency

50k Accesses

18 Citations

3 Altmetric

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (16 chapters)

Front matter, the transition of child to adult.

• Peter C. Kratcoski, Lucille Dunn Kratcoski, Peter Christopher Kratcoski

Past and Current Bio-Social Perspectives on Delinquency Causation

Social-psychological theories of delinquency, social organization perspectives on delinquency causation, perspectives on interpersonal relationships in the family, perspectives on gangs and peer group influences pertaining to delinquency causation, perspectives on delinquency and violence in the schools, laws and court cases pertaining to children: offenders and victims, perspectives on children as victims of abuse and neglect, the police role in delinquency prevention and control, processing the juvenile offender: diversion, informal handling, and special dockets, the juvenile court process, probation and community-based programs, perspectives on juveniles incarcerated in secure facilities, parole and community supervision, counseling and treatment of juvenile offenders, back matter.

• juvenile delinquency
• juvenile justice
• at-risk children
• at-risk youth
• status offenders
• juvenile court
• family court
• juvenile corrections
• developmental and life-course criminology
• age-crime curve

About this book

Authors and affiliations.

Peter C. Kratcoski

Lucille Dunn Kratcoski

Williams, Welser & Kratcoski LLC, Kent, USA

Peter Christopher Kratcoski

About the authors

Peter Charles Kratcoski earned a PhD in sociology from the Pennsylvania State university, a MA in sociology from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in sociology from King’s College. He taught at St. Thomas College and Pennsylvania State University before assuming the position of assistant professor of sociology at Kent State University. He retired as professor  of  sociology/criminal justice studies and Chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice Studies at Kent State University. He is currently a professor emeritus and adjunct professor at Kent State. He has published many books, book chapters and journal articles in juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, juvenile victimization and crime prevention as well as completing numerous research  projects   relating to policing, crime prevention, juvenile delinquency prevention and victimization. His most recent publications include author of Correctional Counseling and Treatment (6 th edition) 2017, co-editor of Corruption, Fraud, Organized Crime, and the Shadow Economy, 2016 and co-editor of Perspectives on Elderly Crime and Victimization, 2018.

Lucille Dunn Kratcoski was awarded a  Bachelor of Arts degree  from Marywood College and a Master degree in music from Pennsylvania State University. She has numerous years teaching experience at the elementary, high school and university levels as well as providing private instruction. She co-authored Juvenile Delinquency and a number of book chapters and journal articles on the subject of juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice. In addition to her private practice, she serves as a  Kratcoski Research Associate.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Juvenile Delinquency

Book Subtitle : Theory, Research, and the Juvenile Justice Process

Authors : Peter C. Kratcoski, Lucille Dunn Kratcoski, Peter Christopher Kratcoski

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31452-1

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Law and Criminology , Law and Criminology (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-31451-4 Published: 16 December 2019

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-31454-5 Published: 06 January 2021

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-31452-1 Published: 03 December 2019

Edition Number : 6

Number of Pages : XXVI, 442

Number of Illustrations : 6 b/w illustrations

Additional Information : Originally published by Pearson Education, Inc., Old Tappan, New Jersey, 2003

Topics : Youth Offending and Juvenile Justice , Criminological Theory

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Juvenile Delinquency Research Paper

This sample juvenile delinquency research paper features: 6300 words (approx. 21 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 76 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

Juveniles placed in institutions, creation of the juvenile court, influence of positivism, the emergence of sociological theory, peers and gangs, the use of drugs and its relationship to delinquent behavior, biological explanations of delinquent behavior, psychological explanations of delinquent behavior, sociological explanations of delinquent behavior, is delinquent behavior rational, developmental paths of delinquency, human agency and delinquency across the life course, gender and delinquent behavior, delinquency prevention.

• Bibliography

Juvenile delinquency—crimes committed by young people—constitute, by recent estimates, nearly one fifth of the crimes against people and one-third of the property crimes in the United States. The high incidence of juvenile crime makes the study of juvenile delinquency vital to an understanding of American society. The Uniform Crime Reports, juvenile court statistics, cohort studies, self-report studies, and victimization surveys are the major sources of data used to measure the extent and nature of delinquent behavior. These forms of examination have generally agreed on the following findings:

Academic Writing, Editing, Proofreading, And Problem Solving Services

Get 10% off with 24start discount code.

• Juvenile delinquency is widespread in the United States.
• The majority of youths have committed some form of delinquency during their adolescent years.
• Three out of four juvenile arrests are arrests of males.
• Lower-class youths tend to commit more frequent and serious offenses than do higher-class youths.
• Minority youths, especially African American, tend to commit more serious delinquent acts than do white youths.

The number of juvenile homicides has been going down since the mid-1990s. Philip J. Cook and John Laub (1998) found that a changing context, as well as a more limited availability of guns, helped explain the reduced rate of juvenile homicides. Cook and Laub predicted that this changing context would continue to decrease youth homicides in the immediate future. Cook and Jens Ludwig (2004) and Anthony A. Braga (2003) also identified the high correlation between gun ownership and juvenile homicides.

The study of juvenile delinquency is full of conflicting positions. There are those who believe that this area of study should be limited to the theories of why juveniles become involved with crime. Others contend that the study of delinquency also ought to include the environmental influences on juvenile crime, such as the family, school, peer and gang participation, and drug involvements. Still others conclude that the study of delinquency should include the social control of juvenile crime, as well as causation theories and environmental influences.

The study of delinquency has clearly changed over the years. Throughout the twentieth century, delinquency studies became more interdisciplinary, more concerned about the integration with other theories, more methodologically sophisticated, and more focused on long-term follow-up of juveniles, sometimes for several decades. The importance of human agency and delinquency across the life course, both of which rose in theoretical importance during the 1990s, are generating considerable excitement in the early years of the twenty-first century.

The main concerns of this research paper are the origins of the study of delinquency; the emergence of sociological theory; the environmental influences on delinquency; the biological, psychological, and sociological theories that have influenced the field of delinquency; the interdisciplinary theories that are affecting the study of juvenile delinquency; and the prospects for future developments.

Origins of the Study of Juvenile Delinquency

What to do with wayward juveniles has long been a concern of American society. Before the end of the eighteenth century, the family was believed to be the source of cause of deviancy, and therefore, the idea emerged that perhaps the well-adjusted family could provide the model for a correctional institution for children. The house of refuge, the first juvenile institution, reflected the family model wholeheartedly; it was designed to bring the order, discipline, and care of the family into institutional life. The institution was to become the home, the peers, the siblings, the staff, and the parents (Rothman 1971).

The New York House of Refuge, which opened on January 1, 1825, with six girls and three boys, is generally acknowledged as the first house of refuge. Over the next decade, Bangor, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Mobile, Philadelphia, and Richmond followed suit in establishing houses of refuge. Twenty-three schools were chartered in the 1830s and another 30 in the 1840s. Some houses of refuge were established by private agencies, some by state governments or legislatures, and some jointly by public authorities and private organizations (Rothman 1971).

One of the changes in juvenile institutions throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century was the development of the cottage system. Eventually called “training schools” or “industrial schools,” these institutions would house smaller groups of youths in separate buildings, usually no more than 20–40 youths per cottage. House parents, typically a man and his wife, constituted the staff in these cottages. Early cottages were log cabins; later cottages were constructed from brick or stone.

Barbara M. Brenzel’s (1983) study of the State Industrial School for Girls in Lancaster, Massachusetts, the first state reform school for girls in the United States, revealed the growing disillusionment in the mid- to late nineteenth century regarding training schools. Intended as a model reform effort, Lancaster was the first “familystyle” institution in the United States and embodied new theories about the reformation of youths. However, an “examination of a reform institution during the second half of the nineteenth century reveals the evolution from reformist visions and optimistic goals at mid-century to pessimism and ‘scientific’ determinism at the century’s close” (p. 1). Brenzel added that “the mid-century ideal of rehabilitative care changed to the principle of rigid training and custodial care by the 1880s and remained so into the early twentieth century” (pp. 4–5).

During the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Progressive Reformers viewed childhood as a period of dependency and exclusion from the adult world. To institutionalize childhood, they enacted a number of “child saving” laws, including child labor and compulsory school attendance laws. The juvenile court was viewed as another means to achieve unparalleled age segregation of children (Feld 1999). The following are a number of contextual factors that influenced the creation of this court.

Legal Context

The juvenile court was founded in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois, in 1899, when the Illinois legislature passed the Juvenile Court Act, and later that year was established in Denver, Colorado. The parens patriae doctrine provided a legal catalyst for the creation of the juvenile court, furnishing a rationale for use of informal procedures for dealing with juveniles and for expanding state power over the lives of children.

Political Context

In the Child Savers, Anthony Platt (1977) developed the political context of the origin of the juvenile court. He stated that the juvenile court was established in Chicago and later elsewhere because it satisfied several middleclass interest groups. He saw the juvenile court as an expression of middle-class values and of the philosophy of conservative political groups. In denying that the juvenile court was revolutionary, Platt charged that

the child-saving movement was not so much a break with the past as an affirmation of faith in traditional institutions. . . . What seemingly began as a movement to humanize the lives of adolescents soon developed into a program of moral absolutism through which youths were to be saved from movies, pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, and anything else which might possibly rob them of their innocence. (Pp. 98–99)

Economic Context

Platt (1977) argued that the behaviors that the child savers selected to be penalized—such as roaming the streets, drinking, fighting, engaging in sex, frequenting dance halls, and staying out late at night—were found primarily among lower-class children. Accordingly, juvenile justice from it inception, he contended, reflected class favoritism that resulted in the frequent processing of poor children through the system while middle- and upper-class children were more likely to be excused.

Sociocultural Context

The social conditions that were present during the final decades of the nineteenth century were the catalysts that led to the founding of the juvenile court. One social condition was that citizens became increasingly incensed by the treatment of children, especially the policy of jailing children with adults. Another social condition was that the higher status given middle-class women made them interested in exerting their newfound influence to improve the lives of children (Faust and Brantingham 1974).

These pressures for social change took place in the midst of a wave of optimism that swept through the United States during the Progressive Era, the period from 1899 to 1920. The emerging social sciences assured reformers that their problems with delinquents could be solved through positivism. According to positivism, youths were not responsible for their behavior and required treatment rather than punishment.

The concept of the juvenile court spread rapidly across the United States; by 1928, only two states did not have a juvenile court statute. In Cook County, the amendments that followed the original act brought the neglected, the dependent, and the delinquent together under one roof. The “delinquent” category comprised both status offenders and actual violators of criminal law.

Urban juveniles courts, especially, had clinics that provided psychological services for those youths referred to them by the juvenile court. Those who provided such services in the clinics were psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, or psychiatric social workers. The treatment modality that was frequently used was various versions of Freudian psychoanalysis. Typically, in a one-to-one relationship with a therapist, youths in trouble were encouraged to talk about past conflicts that caused them to express emotional problems through aggressive or antisocial behavior. The insights that youths gained from this psychotherapy were intended to help them resolve the conflicts and unconscious needs that drove them to crime. As a final step of psychotherapy, youths would become responsible for their behaviors.

From the second decade of the twentieth century, the Chicago School of Sociology developed a sociological approach to delinquency that differed greatly from that found in psychological positivism. The intellectual movement of social disorganization theory came out of this Chicago school. To William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki (1927), social disorganization reflected the influence of an urban, industrial setting on the ability of immigrant subcultures, particularly parents, to socialize and effectively control their children. S. P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott (1970) contributed the idea of plotting “delinquency maps.” Frederick M. Thrasher (1927) viewed the youth gang as a substitute socializing institution whose function was to provide order, or social organization where there was none, or social disorganization.

Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay extended social disorganization by focusing specifically on the social characteristics of the community as a cause of delinquency. Their pioneering investigations established that delinquency varied in inverse proportion to the distance from the center of the city, that it varied inversely with socioeconomic status, and that delinquency rates in a residential area persisted regardless of changes in racial and ethic composition of the area (Reiss 1976).

Shaw and McKay viewed juvenile delinquency as resulting from the breakdown of social control among the traditional primary groups, such as the family and the neighborhood, because of the social disorganization of the community. Urbanization, rapid industrialization, and immigration processes contributed to the disorganization of the community. Thus, delinquent behavior became an alternative mode of socialization through which youths who grew up in disorganized communities were attracted to deviant lifestyles (Finestone 1976).

Shaw and McKay turned to ecology to show this relationship between social disorganization and delinquency. Shaw (1929) reported that marked variations of school truancy, juvenile delinquency, and adult criminality existed among different areas in Chicago. Shaw found that the nearer a given locality was to the center of the city, the higher its rates of delinquency and crime. Shaw further found that areas of concentrated crime maintained their high rates over a long period, even when the composition of the population changed markedly. Shaw and McKay (1931), in a study performed for the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, reported that this basic ecological finding was also true for a number of other cities.

In their classic work Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas, Shaw and McKay (1942) developed these ecological insights in greater scope and depth. They studied males who were brought into the Cook County juvenile court on delinquency charges in 1900–1906, 1917–1923, and 1927–1933. Over this 33-year period, they discovered that the vast majority of the delinquent boys came from either an area adjacent to the central business and industrial areas or along two forks of the Chicago River. Then, applying Burgess’s concentric zone hypothesis of urban growth, they measured delinquency rates by zone and by areas within the zone. They found that in all three periods, the highest rates of delinquency were in Zone I (the central city), the next highest in Zone II (next to the central city), in progressive steps outward to the lowest in Zone V. Significantly, although the delinquency rates changed from one period to the next, the relationship among the different zones remained constant, even though in some neighborhoods the ethnic compositions of the population changed totally.

Shaw and McKay eventually refocused their analysis from the influence of social disorganization of the community to the importance of economics on high rates of delinquency. They found that the economic and occupational structure of the larger society was more influential in the rise of delinquent behavior than was the social life of the local community. They concluded that the reason members of lower-class groups remained in the inner-city community was less a reflection of their newness of arrival and their lack of acculturation to American institutions than it was a function of their class position in society (Finestone 1976).

Environmental Influences on Juvenile Delinquency

The importance of the Shaw and McKay tradition of the environment and community has long remained in the study of delinquency. An examination of the relationship between the family and delinquency, school performance and delinquency, drug use and delinquency, and participation in gangs and delinquency are generally found in studies of environmental influences on delinquency.

In the midst of conflicting findings about the relationship between delinquency and the family, the following observations have received wide support:

• Family conflict and poor marital adjustment are more likely to lead to delinquency than the structural breakup of the family (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber 1986).
• Children who have delinquent siblings or criminal parents seem to be more prone to delinquent behavior than those who do not (Lauritsen 1993).
• Rejected children appear to be more prone to delinquent behavior than those who have not been rejected. Children who have experienced severe rejection are more likely to become involved in delinquent behavior than those who have experienced a lesser degree of rejection (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber 1986).
• Consistency of discipline within the family appears to be important in deterring delinquent behavior (McCord, McCord, and Zola 1959).
• The rate of delinquency seems to increase with the number of unfavorable factors in the home. Thus, multiple handicaps within the family are associated with a higher probability of juvenile delinquency than are single handicaps (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber 1986).

Studies have found that the school is a critical context, or arena, of learning delinquent behavior. For example, Eugene Maguin and Rolf Loeber’s (1996) meta-analysis found that “children with lower academic performance offended more frequently, committed more serious and violent offenses, and persisted in their offending” (p. 15).

The extent of delinquency in the school, including vandalism, violence, gangs, and the use of drugs, has received considerable examination (Bartollas 2006). The consequences of dropping out of school have also been investigated (Jarjoura 1993). In addition, there have been a number of efforts to improve the quality of the school experience. The development of alternative schools, the process of designing effective school-based violenceprevention programs, and the process of developing more positive school-community relationships have been three of the most promising intervention strategies in the school setting (Bartollas 2006).

Researchers usually agree that most delinquent behavior, particularly more violent forms, takes place in groups, but they disagree on the quality of relationships within delinquent groups and on the influence of groups on delinquent behavior (Breckinridge and Abbott 1970; Piper 1985). There is still debate on several theoretical questions about groups and delinquency: How do delinquent peers influence each other? What causes the initial attraction to delinquent groups? What do delinquents receive from these friendships that result in continuing them?

Youth gangs represent one of the most serious forms of delinquency groups. Frederick Thrasher’s (1927) definition of gangs is still one of the best definitions:

A gang is an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective, internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to local territory. (P. 57)

Juveniles are involved in urban street gangs, where they are typically a minority of the membership. However, they make up nearly the total membership of emerging gangs that spread across the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. What has received considerable documentation is that law-violating behaviors increase with gang activities, that core members are involved in more serious delinquent acts than are fringe members, and that gang activities contribute to a pattern of violent behavior (Wolfgang, Thornberry, and Figlio 1987; Battin-Pearson et al. 1998; Miller 2001; Miller and Decker 2001).

Drug and alcohol use and juvenile delinquency have been identified as the most serious problem behaviors of juveniles. The good news is that substance abuse among adolescents has dropped significantly since the late 1970s. The bad news is that drug use has significantly increased among high-risk youths and is becoming commonly linked to juvenile delinquency (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2004; Johnston et al. 2004). In addition, more adolescents are selling drugs than ever before in the history of this nation. Moreover, the spread of AIDS within populations of drug users and their sex partners promises to make the problem of substance abuse even more difficult to control.

The Biological, Psychological, and Sociological Theories

A number of theoretical answers have been given to the continually raised question: Why do juveniles commit crime? Early in the twentieth century, biological and psychological causes of delinquent behavior received more attention. In the last two-thirds of the twentieth century, sociological explanations to delinquency behavior received greater support with students of delinquency.

The belief in a biological explanation for criminality has a long history. Early approaches attempted to pinpoint the source of criminality in physical anomalities (Lombroso-Ferrero 1972), genealogical deficiencies (Shah and Roth 1974), and theories of human somatotypes or body types (Glueck and Glueck 1956; Cortes 1972). More recently, research has stressed the interaction between the biological factors within an individual and the influence of the particular environment. Supporters of this form of biological positivism claim that what produces delinquent behavior, like other behaviors, is a combination of genetic traits and social conditions. Recent advances in experimental behavior genetics, human population genetics, knowledge of the biochemistry of the nervous system, experimental and clinical endocrinology and neurophysiology, and other related areas have led to more sophisticated knowledge of the way in which the environment and human genetics interact to affect the growth, development, and functioning of the human organism (Shah and Roth 1974; Fishbein 1990).

Psychological factors have long been popular in the positivist approach to the cause of juvenile delinquency because the very nature of parens patriae philosophy requires treatment of youths who are involved in various forms of delinquency. Psychoanalytic (Freudian) theory was first used with delinquents, but more recently other behavioral and humanistic schools of psychology have been applied to the problem of the illegal behaviors of juveniles. For example, some researchers in the 1980s and 1990s addressed the relationship between sensation seeking and crime (White, Labouvie, and Bates 1985; Fishbein 1990). Jack Katz’s (1988) Seductions of Crime conjectures that when individuals commit crime, they become involved in “an emotional process—seductions and compulsions that have special dynamics” (p. 9). It is this “magical” and “transformative” experience that makes crime “sensible,” even “sensually compelling.” James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein’s (1985) Crime and Human Nature is another example of the influence of psychological factors on criminal or delinquent behaviors. They consider potential causes of crime and noncrime within the context of reinforcement theory, that is, the theory that behavior is governed by its consequent rewards and punishments, as reflected in the history of the individual. The rewards of crime, according to Wilson and Herrnstein (1985), are found in the form of material gain, revenge against an enemy, peer approval, and sexual gratification. The consequences of crime include pangs of conscience, disapproval of peers, revenge by the victim, and, most important, the possibility of punishment.

Sociological theories related to delinquency causation have been grouped in a number of ways; the following sections will group them in structural theories of delinquency causation, process theories of delinquency causation, reaction theories of delinquency causation, and integrated theories of delinquency causation.

Structural Theories of Delinquency Causation

The setting for delinquency, as proposed by social structural theories, is the social and cultural environment in which juveniles grow up or the subcultural groups in which they choose to become involved. Using official statistics as their guide, these analysts claim that such forces as social disorganization, cultural deviance, status frustration, and social mobility are so powerful that they induce youths, especially lower-class ones, to become involved in delinquent behavior. Strain theory is a structural theory that has been widely applied to explaining delinquent behavior. Robert K. Merton’s theory of anomie, Albert K. Cohen’s theory of delinquent subcultures, and Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin’s opportunity theory are the most widely cited strain theories. Merton (1957) examined how deviant behavior is produced by different social structures. His primary aim was to discover how some social structures exerted pressure upon individuals in the society to engage in nonconforming rather than conforming behavior. Cohen’s (1955) thesis in his book Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang was that lower-class youths are actually protesting against the goals of middle-class culture, but they experience status frustration, or strain, because they are unable to attain these goals. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) conceptualized success and status as separate strivings that can operate independently of each other. They portrayed delinquents who seek an increase in status as striving for membership in the middle class, whereas other delinquent youths try to improve their economic post without changing their class position.

Social Process Theories of Delinquency Causation

Social process theories of delinquency causation examine the interactions between individuals and the environment that influence them to become involved in delinquent behaviors. Differential association, drift, and social control theories became popular in the 1960s because they provided a theoretical mechanism for the translation of environmental factors into individual motivation. Edwin H. Sutherland’s (1947) formulation of differential association theory proposes that delinquents learn crime from others. His basic premise was that delinquency, like any other form of behavior, is a product of social interaction. In developing the theory of differential association, Sutherland contended that individuals are constantly being changed as they take on the expectations and points of view of the people with whom they interact in small, intimate groups. The process of becoming a delinquent, David Matza (1964) says, begins when an adolescent neutralizes himself or herself from the moral bounds of the law and drifts into delinquency. Drift, according to Matza, means that “the delinquent transiently exists in limbo between convention and crime, responding in turn to the demands of each, flirting now with one, now the other, but postponing commitment, evading decision. Thus he drifts between criminal and conventional action” (p. 28). Walter C. Reckless’s (1961) control theory is based on the assumption that strong inner containment and reinforcing external containment provide insulation against deviant behavior. Travis Hirschi’s (1967) Causes of Delinquency linked delinquent behavior to the quality of the bond an individual maintains with society, stating that “delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken” (p. 16). He argues that humans’ basic impulses motivate them to become involved in crime and delinquency unless there is reason for them to refrain from such behavior.

Social Reaction Theories of Delinquency Causation

Labeling theory, symbolic interactionst theory of delinquency, and conflict theory can be viewed as social reaction theories of delinquency causation because they focus on the role that social and economic groups and institutions have in producing delinquent behavior. The labeling perspective, whose peak of popularity was in the 1960s and 1970s, is based on the premise that society creates deviance by labeling those who are different from other individuals, when in fact they are different merely because they have been tagged with a deviant label part played by social audiences and their responses to the norm violations of juveniles (Tannenbaum 1938; Lemert 1951; Becker 1963; Triplett and Jarjoura 1994). Ross L. Matsueda (1992) and Karen Heimer (1995) have developed a symbolic interactionist theory of delinquency. This interactionist perspective “presupposes that the social order is the product of an ongoing process of social interaction and communication” (Matsueda 1992:1580). What is “of central importance is the process by which shared meanings, behavioral expectations, and reflected appraisals are built up in interaction and applied to behavior” (p. 1580). The conflict perspective views social control as an outcome of the differential distribution of economic and political power in society; thus, laws are seen as creation by the powerful for their own benefit (Shichor 1980). Conflict criminology has a great deal of variation; some theories emphasize the importance of socioeconomic class, some focus primarily on power and authority relationships, and others emphasize group and cultural conflict.

Integrated Theory

The theoretical development of integrated explanations of delinquency in the 1980s and 1990s has made a significant contribution to the understanding of delinquent behavior. Theory integration usually implies the combination of two or more existing theories on the basis of their perceived commonalities. Three of the better-known integrated theories are Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi’s (1990) general theory of crime; Delbert S. Elliot, Suzanne A. Ageton, and Rachelle J. Canter’s (1979) integrated social process theory; and Terence P. Thornberry’s (1987) interactional theory.

In A General Theory of Crime, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) define lack of self-control as the common factor underlying problem behaviors. Thus, self-control is the degree to which an individual is “vulnerable to the temptations of the moment.” The other pivotal construct in this theory of crime is crime opportunity, which is a function of the structural or situational circumstances encountered by the individuals (Grasmick et al. 1993).

Elliott et al. (1979) offer “an explanatory model that expands and synthesizes traditional strain, social control, and social learning perspectives into a single paradigm that accounts for delinquent behavior and drug use” (p. 11). They argue that all three theories are flawed in explaining delinquent behavior. Integrating the strongest features of these theories into a single theoretical model, Elliott and colleagues theorize that there is a high probability of involvement in delinquent behavior when bonding to delinquent groups is combined with weak bonding to conventional groups. In Thornberry’s interaction theory of delinquency, the initial impetus toward delinquency comes from a weaning of the person’s bond to conventional society, represented by attachment to parents, commitment to school, and belief in conventional values. Associations with delinquent peers and delinquent values make up the social settling in which delinquency, especially prolonged serious delinquency, is learned and reinforced. These two variables, along with delinquent behavior itself, form a mutually reinforcing casual loop that leads toward increasing delinquency involvement over time (Thornberry 1987, 1989; Thornberry et al. 2003) (Table 1).

     Table 1

In the 1970s and 1980s, a variety of academic areas, including the sociology of deviance, criminology, economics, and cognitive psychology, began to view crime as the outcome of rational choices and decisions. The ecological tradition in criminology and the economic theory of markets, especially, have applied the notion of rational choice to crime.

Rational choice theory, borrowed primarily from the utility model in economics, was one area of intense interest during the 1980s and 1990s, especially within criminology, sociology, political science, and law. Rational choice theory, an extension of the deterrence doctrine of the classical school, includes incentives as well as deterrents and focuses on the calculation of payoffs and costs before delinquent and criminal acts are committed (Cornish and Clarke 1986; Akers 1990).

An analysis of delinquent behavior leads to the conclusion that antisocial behavior often appears rational and purposeful. Some delinquents clearly engage in delinquent behavior because of the low cost or risk of such behavior. The low risk comes from the parens patriae philosophy that is based on the presumption of innocence for the very young, as well as of reduced responsibility for those up to their midadolescence. Thus, in early adolescence, the potential costs of all but the most serious forms of delinquent behavior are relatively slight.

Conclusion and Prospects for the 21st Century

The development of both sociology and juvenile delinquency was influenced by the rise of the Chicago School of Sociology early in the twentieth century. With this common background, it is not surprising that juvenile delinquency has been so closely related to the discipline of sociology. Juvenile delinquency has been taught in the majority of sociology departments, as well as in many criminology or criminal justice programs in university settings and community colleges. The study of juvenile delinquency is further indebted to sociology because so many of the theories of delinquency causation are sociological theories of crime. Even though the study of juvenile delinquency has become interdisciplinary, sociological principles and theories remain critical in understanding the field of delinquency. Indeed, the new trends in delinquency, such as human agency and delinquency across the life course, are adapted from theoretical and empirical contributions largely taken from the field of sociology.

The prospects for the study of delinquency in the twenty-first century are vibrant and exciting.

Some of the emphases that will guide the study of delinquency are the examination of the development paths of delinquent behavior, a continued examination of human agency and delinquency across the life course, an investigation of the ways in which gender affects the study of delinquency, and a renewed search for more effective means of delinquency prevention.

One of the most exciting aspects about the study of juvenile delinquency today is the increasing number of developmental studies that have followed youth cohorts for a few years or even decades. One of the most widely respected of these studies is the research done by Terrie E. Moffitt and colleagues. For example, Moffitt, Donald R. Lynam, and Phil A. Silva’s (1994) examination of the neuropsychological status of several hundred New Zealand males between the ages of 13 and 18 found that poor neuropsychological scores “were associated with early onset of delinquency” but were “unrelated to delinquency that began in adolescence” (p. 277). Moffitt’s (1993) developmental theory views delinquency as proceeding along two developmental paths. On one path, children develop a lifelong path of delinquency and crime as early as age 3. They may begin to bite and hit shoplift and be truant at age 10, sell drugs and steal cars at age 16, rob and rape at age 22, and commit fraud and child abuse at age 30. These “life-course-persistent” (LCP) delinquents, according to Moffitt, continue their illegal acts throughout the conditions and situations they face. During childhood, they may also exhibit such neuropsychological problems as deficit disorders or hyperactivity and learning problems in schools.

On the other path, the majority of delinquents begin offending during the adolescent years and desist from delinquent behaviors around the 18th birthday. Moffitt refers to these youthful offenders as “adolescent-limited” (AL) delinquents. The early and persistent problems found with members of the LCP group are not found with the AL delinquents. Yet the frequency of offending and even the violence of offending during the adolescent years may be as high as the LCP. Moffitt notes that the AL antisocial behavior is learned from peers and sustained through peerbased rewards and reinforcements. AL delinquents continue in delinquent acts as long as such behaviors appear profitable or rewarding to them, but they have the ability to abandon those behaviors when prosocial styles become more rewarding (Moffitt 1993; Moffitt et al. 2001).

This enormous database of these developmental studies has contributed to the examination of such subjects as the importance of human agency in the lives of youths and later when they become adults and to delinquency or crime across the life course. Human agency refers to the importance given to juveniles who are not only acted upon by social influence and structural constraints but who make choices and decisions based on the alternatives that they see before them. Symbolic interactionism and life history studies have long acknowledged the importance of agency and rationality, and rational choice and routine activities research have more recently placed an importance on rationality in delinquent and criminal behavior. However, it has been the increased attention given to the life course in both sociology and delinquency studies that has sparked a dramatic resurgence of interest in agency in contemporary research.

The various perspectives on the life course relate individuals to their broader social context, but within the constraints of their world, individuals make choices among options that are available to them. It is these decisions that are so important in constructing their life course. Delinquency across the life course has been examined extensively by Robert J. Sampson and James H. Laub’s reanalysis of the Gluecks’ data (Sampson and Laub 1993; Laub and Sampson 2003). This perspective of delinquency and crime across the life course has been employed in studies of the effects of youth gangs, faulty family relationships, poor performance in school, drug use, and gender variations in youth offending (Bartollas 2006).

Moreover, this interactive process develops over the person’s life cycle. During early adolescence, the family is the most influential factor in bonding the youngster to conventional society and reducing delinquency. But as the youth matures and moves through middle adolescence, the world of friends, school, and youth culture becomes the dominant influence over behavior. Finally, as the person enters adulthood, commitment to conventional activities, and to family, especially, offers new avenues to reshape the person’s bond to society and involvement with delinquent behavior (Thornberry 1987; Krohn et al. 2001).

The study of delinquency has been traditionally shaped by male experiences and understanding of the social world (Daly and Chesney-Lind 1988). Carol Smart (1976) and Dorie Klein (1995) were two early criminologists to suggest that a feminist criminology should be formulated because of the neglect of the feminist perspective in classical delinquency theory. Feminist criminologists have been quick to agree that adolescent females have different experiences compared with adolescent males. They generally support that females are more controlled than males, enjoy more social support, are less disposed to crime, and have fewer opportunities for certain types of crimes (Mazerolle 1998).

However, feminist criminologists disagree on how the male-oriented approach to delinquency should be handled. One approach focuses on the question of generalizability. In research on samples that include males and females, a routine strategy for those who emphasize cross-gender similarities is to test whether the given theoretical constructs account for the offending of both groups and to pay little attention to how gender itself might intersect with other factors to create different meanings in the lives of males and females. Those who support this gender-neutral position have generally examined such subjects as the family, social bonding, social learning, delinquent peer relationships, and, to a lesser degree, deterrence and strain (Daly 1995).

In contrast, other feminist theorists argue that new theoretical efforts are needed to help us understand female delinquency and women’s involvement in adult crime. Eileen Leonard (1995), for example, questioned whether anomie, differential association, labeling, and Marist theories can be used to explain the crime patterns of women. She concluded that these traditional theories do not work for explaining female offending. Meda ChesneyLind’s (1989, 1995) application of the male-oriented theories to female delinquency has argued that existing delinquency theories are inadequate to explain female delinquency. She suggested that there is a need for a feminist model of delinquency, because a patriarchal context has shaped the explanations and handling of female delinquents and status offenders. What this means is that adolescent females’ sexual and physical victimizations at home and the relationship between these experiences and their crimes have been systematically ignored.

Delinquency prevention has a long but somewhat disappointing history. The best-known models of delinquency prevention have included the Boston’s Mid-city Project, Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study in Massachusetts, Chicago Area Projects, La Playa de Ponce in Puerto Rico, New York City Youth Board, and Walter C. Reckless and Simon Dinitz’s self-concept studies in Columbus, Ohio. A number of studies have examined the effectiveness of these delinquency-prevention programs and have generally found that few studies showed significant results (Lundman, McFarlane, and Scarpitti 1976; Lundman and Scarpitti 1978).

Beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present, a number of new delinquency-prevention efforts have been established. The Blueprints for Violence Prevention, developed by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado–Boulder and supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, identified 11 model programs, as well as a number of promising violence-prevention and drug abuse programs. The identified model programs were Big Brothers Big Sisters of America; Bully Prevention Program; Functional Family Therapy (FFT); Incredible Years: Parent, Teacher, and Child Training Series; Life Skills Training; Midwestern Prevention Project; Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC); Multisystemic Therapy (MST); Nurse-Family Partnership; Project Towards No Drug Abuse; and Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (Mihalic et al. 2004).

The popularity of delinquency-prevention programs, of course, is found in the realization that the most desirable strategy is to prevent delinquent behavior before it can occur. Even though delinquency-prevention programs have generally fallen short of controlling youth crime, there is every reason to believe that renewed efforts will be continued throughout the twenty-first century.

Bibliography:

• Akers, Ronald L. 1990. “Rational Choice, Deterrence, and Social Learning Theory in Criminology: The Path Not Taken.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 81:653–76.
• Bartollas, Clemens. 2006. Juvenile Delinquency. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
• Battin-Pearson, Sara R., Terence P. Thornberry, J. David Hawkins, and Marvin D. Krohn. 1998. “Gang Membership, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquent Behavior.” Juvenile Justice Bulletin, October .
• Becker, Howard S. 1963. New York: Free Press.
• Braga, Anthony A. 2003. “Serious Youth Gun Offenders and the Epidemic of Youth Violence in Boston.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 19:33–54.
• Breckinridge, S. P. and Edith Abbott. 1970. The Delinquent Child and the Home. New York: Arno Press.
• Brenzel, Barbara. 1983. Daughters of the State. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2004. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance-United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Chesney-Lind, Meda. 1989. “Girls, Crime and Women’s Place.” Crime and Delinquency 35:5–29.
• Chesney-Lind, Meda. 1995. “Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice: Toward a Feminist Theory of Young Women’s Crime.” Pp. 71–88 in The Criminal Justice System and Women, edited by B. R. Price and N. J. Sokoloff. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Cloward, Richard A. and Lloyd E. Ohlin. 1960. Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
• Cohen, Albert K. 1955. Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
• Cook, Philip J. and John Laub. 1998. “The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence.” Pp. 27–64 in Crime and Justice, edited by M. H. Moore and M. Tonry . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Cook, Philip J. and Jens Ludwig. 2004. “Does Gun Prevalence Affect Teen Gun Carrying After All?” Criminology 42:27–54.
• Cornish, Derek and Ronald V. Clarke, eds. 1986. The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. New York: Springer.
• Cortes, Juan B., with Florence M. Gatti. 1972. Delinquency and Crime: A Biopsychosocial Approach; Empirical, Theoretical, and Practical Aspects of Criminal Behavior. New York: Seminar Press.
• Daly, Kathleen. 1995. “Looking Back, Looking Forward: the Promise of Feminist Transformation. Pp. 447–48 in The Criminal Justice System and Women, edited by B. R. Price and N. J. Sokoloff. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Daly, Kathleen and Meda Chesney-Lind. 1988. “Feminism and Criminology?” Justice Quarterly 5:497–538.
• Elliott, Delbert S., Suzanne S. Ageton, and Rachelle J. Canter. 1979. “An Integrated Theoretical Perspective on Delinquent Behavior.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 16:3–27.
• Faust, Frederic and Paul J. Brantingham, eds. 1974. Juvenile Justice Philosophy. Paul, MN: West.
• Feld, Barry. 1999. Bad Kids: Race and the Transformation of the Juvenile Court. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Finestone, Harold. 1976. Victims of Change: Juvenile Delinquents in American Society. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• Fishbein, Diana. H. 1990. “Biological Perspectives in Criminology.” Criminology 28:27–72.
• Glueck, Nelson and Eleanor Glueck. 1956. Physique and Delinquency. New York: Harper & Row.
• Gottfredson, Michael R. and Travis Hirschi. 1990. A General Theory of Crime. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Grasmick, Harold G., Charles R. Tittle, Robert J. Bursik Jr., and Bruce J. Arneklev. 1993. “Testing the Core Empirical Implications of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 30:5–29.
• Heimer, Karen. 1995. “Gender, Race, and the Pathways to Delinquency.” Pp. 140–53 in Crime and Inequality, edited by J. Hagen and R. D. Peterson . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Hirschi, Travis. 1967. Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: California University Press.
• Jarjoura, G. Roger. 1993. “Does Dropping Out of School Enhance Delinquent Involvement? Results from a Large-Scale National Probability Sample.” Criminology 31:149–71.
• Johnston, L. D., P. M. O’Malley, J. G. Bachman, and J. E. Schulenberg. 2004. Monitoring the Future: Monitoring the Future National Results on Adolescent Drug Use: Overview of Key Findings. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Drug Abuse.
• Katz, Jack. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books.
• Klein, Dorie. 1995. “The Etiology of Female Crime:A Review of the Literature.” Pp. 30–53 in The Criminal Justice System and Women, edited by B. R. Price and N. J. Sokoloff. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Krohn, Marvin D., Terence P. Thornberry, Craig Rivera, and Marc Le Blanc. 2001. “Later Delinquency Careers.” Pp. 67–93 in Child Development, edited by R. Loeber and D. P. Farrington. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Laub, James H. and Robert J. Sampson. 2003. Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Lauritsen, Janet L. 1993. “Sibling Resemblance in Juvenile Delinquency: Findings from a National Youth Survey.” Criminology 31:387–409.
• Lemert, Edwin M. 1951. Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Leonard, Eileen. 1995. “Theoretical Criminology and Gender.” Pp. 55–70 in The Criminal Justice System and Women, edited by B. R. Price and N. J. Sokoloff. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Loeber, Rolf and M. Stouthamer-Loeber. 1986. “Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency.” Pp. 29–149 in Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, edited by M. Tonry and N. Morris. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Lombroso-Ferrero, Gina. 1972. Criminal Man According to Classification of Cesare Lombroso. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.
• Lundman, Richard J., Paul T. McFarlane, and Frank R. Scarpitti. 1976. “Delinquency Prevention: A Description and Assessment of Projects Reported in the Professional Literature.” Crime and Delinquency 22:297–309.
• Lundman, Richard J. and Frank R. Scarpitti. 1978. “Delinquency Prevention: Recommendations for Future Projects.” Crime and Delinquency 24:207–20.
• Maguin, Eugene and Rolf Loeber. 1996. “Academic Performance and Delinquency.” Pp. 145–264 in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 20, edited by M. Tonry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Matsueda, Ross. L. 1992. “Reflected Appraisals: Parental Labeling, and Delinquency: Specifying a Symbolic Interactionist Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 97:1577–611.
• Matza, David. 1964. Delinquency and Drift. New York: John Wiley.
• Mazerolle, Paul. 1998. “Gender, General Strain, and Delinquency:An Empirical Examination.” Justice Quarterly 15:65–91.
• McCord, W. J., J. McCord, and Irvin Zola. 1959. The Origins of Crime. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. 2d ed. New York: Free Press.
• Mihalic, Sharon, Katerine Irwin, Abigail Fagan, Diane Ballard, and Delbert Elliott. 2004. Blueprints for Violence Prevention. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
• Miller, Jody. 2001. One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Miller, Jody and Scott Decker. 2001. “Young Women and Gang Violence: Gender, Street Offending, and Violent Victimization in Gangs.” Justice Quarterly 18:115–39.
• Moffitt, Terrie. 1993. “Adolescent-Limited and Life-CoursePersistent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy.” Psychological Review 100:674–701.
• Moffitt, Terrie, Donald R. Lynam, and Phil A. Silva. 1994. “Neuropsychological Tests Predicted Persistent Male Delinquency.” Criminology 32:277–300.
• Moffitt, Terrie E., Avshalom Caspi, Michael Rutter, and Phil A. Silva. 2001. Sex Differences in antisocial behavior. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Piper, Elizabeth S. 1985. “Violent Offenders: Lone Wolf or Wolfpack.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Diego, CA.
• Platt, Anthony. 1977. The Child Savers. 2d ed. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
• Reckless, Walter C. 1961. “A New Theory of Delinquency and Crime.” Federal Probation 24:42–46.
• Reiss, Albert J., Jr. 1976. “Setting the Frontiers of a Pioneer in American Criminology: Henry McKay.” Pp. 64–88 in Delinquency: Crime and Society, edited by J. F. Short . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Rothman, David J. 1971. Discovery of the Asylum. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
• Sampson, Robert J. and James H. Laub. 1993. Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Shah, Saleem A. and Loren H. Roth. 1974. “Biological and Psychophysiological Factors in Criminality.” Pp. 101–73 in Handbook of Criminology, edited by D. Glaser . Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
• Shaw, Clifford R. 1929. Delinquent Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Shaw, Clifford R. and Henry D. McKay. 1931. Social Factors in Juvenile Delinquency. Washington, DC: National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement.
• Shaw, Clifford R. and Henry D. McKay. 1942. Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Smart, Carol. 1976. Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Shichor, David. 1980. “The New Criminology: Some Critical Issues.” British Journal of Criminology 20:1–19.
• Sutherland, Edwin H. 1947. Principles of Criminology. 10th ed . Philadelphia, PA: J. P. Lippincott.
• Frank. 1938. Crime and the Community. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Thomas, William I. and Florian Znaniecki. 1927. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 5 vols. New York: Knopf.
• Thornberry, Terence P. 1987. “Toward an Interactional Theory of Delinquency.” Criminology 25:863–91.
• Thornberry, Terence P. 1989. “Reflections on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Theoretical Integration.” Pp. 51–60 in Theoretical Integration in the Study of Deviance and Crime: Problems and Prospects, edited by S. Messner, M. Krohn, and A. Liska . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Thornberry, Terence P., Marvin D. Krohn, Alan J. Lizotte, Carolyn A. Smith, and Kimberly Tobin. 2003. Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Thrasher, Frederick. 1927. The Gang: A Study of 1313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Triplett, Ruth Ann and G. Roger Jarjoura. 1994. “Theoretical and Empirical Specification of a Model of Informal Labeling.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 10:241–76 .
• White, Herlene Raskin, Erich W. Labouvie, and Marsha E. Bates. 1985. “The Relationship between Sensation Seeking and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Analysis.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 22:195–211.
• Wilson, James Q. and Richard J. Herrnstein. 1985. Crime and Human Nature. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Wolfgang, E. Marvin, Terence P. Thornberry, and Robert F. Figlio. 1987. From Boy to Man: From Delinquency to Crime. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Criminal Justice

IResearchNet

Academic Writing Services

Juvenile delinquency.

The ways that juvenile delinquency has been defined, perceived, and responded to have changed over time and generally reflect the social conditions of the particular era. During the colonial era of the United States, for example, the conceptualization of juvenile delinquency was heavily influenced by religion. At this time, juvenile delinquency was viewed as not only a legal violation, but also a moral violation. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

I. Introduction

Ii. historical background, iii. major theories of juvenile delinquency, iv. types of juvenile delinquents.

V. Conclusion and Bibliography

Delinquent offenses are violations of legal statutes that also apply to adults in the criminal justice system. Delinquent offenses include acts of violence against persons, such as murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated and simple assault, harassment, stalking, menacing, child abuse, and similar offenses. Delinquent offenses also include acts that are considered property crimes, such as burglary, theft or larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson, damage to property, criminal mischief, vandalism, and others. A variety of miscellaneous crimes sometimes known as public order offenses are also delinquent offenses. These include driving while intoxicated, cruelty to animals, possession and use of a controlled substance, forgery, fraud, disorderly conduct, weapons violations, prostitution and commercialized vice, vagrancy and loitering, traffic violations, and others.

Juvenile delinquency is important in society for several reasons but for three in particular. First, children and adolescents commit a significant amount of delinquent offenses that result in violent, property, or other forms of victimization. Each year, more than one million children and adolescents are arrested by police for their delinquent acts. Second, juvenile delinquency is itself seen as an indicator of the general health and prosperity of a society. In neighborhoods with high levels of delinquency, the antisocial behavior is seen as part of a larger set of social problems. In this sense, juvenile delinquency is troubling because of the victimizations that are inflicted and the perceptual image of society as unable to adequately control and supervise young people. Third, as this research paper will explore, juvenile delinquency has different meanings depending on its severity and other factors. For many young people, juvenile delinquency is a fairly normal facet of growing up. For a small group of youths, however, juvenile delinquency is simply the beginning stage of what will become a lifetime of antisocial behavior. This research paper offers a comprehensive look at juvenile delinquency including its historical background, major theories of juvenile delinquency, and types or typologies of juvenile delinquents.

The ways that juvenile delinquency has been defined, perceived, and responded to have changed over time and generally reflect the social conditions of the particular era. During the colonial era of the United States, for example, the conceptualization of juvenile delinquency was heavily influenced by religion. At this time, juvenile delinquency was viewed as not only a legal violation, but also a moral violation. Delinquent acts were viewed as affronts to God and God’s law, and as such, wrongdoers were treated in very punitive and vengeful ways.

American colonial society was similarly harsh toward children and the control of children’s behavior. Throughout society, there was a general notion that children were particularly susceptible to vice and moral violations. For instance, in 1641, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the Stubborn Child Law, which stated that children who disobeyed their parents would be put to death. The language and the spirit of the law were drawn from the biblical Book of Deuteronomy. The Stubborn Child Law descended from the Puritans’ belief that unacknowledged social evils would bring the wrath of God down upon the entire colony. The Puritans believed they had no choice but to react to juvenile misbehavior in a severe and calculated manner. However, not all colonies adopted the Stubborn Child Law. Outside Massachusetts, children found guilty of a serious crime frequently were punished via corporal punishment, which is the infliction of physical pain such as whipping, mutilating, caning, and other methods.

What would today be considered normal and routine adolescent behavior, such as “hanging out with friends,” was in early eras considered serious delinquent behavior, such as sloth and idleness. Today, the use of a death penalty or beatings for minor types of delinquency seems shocking; however, there are similarities between colonial juvenile justice and contemporary juvenile justice. In both eras, adult society held ambivalent views about children. On one hand, children and adolescents were seen as innocents that were not fully developed and required compassion, patience, and understanding. From this perspective, the response to juvenile delinquents should be tempered, tolerant, and used to teach or discipline. On the other hand, children and adolescents were viewed as disrespectful, annoying, and simply different from adults. It was believed that children were born in sin and should submit to adult authority.

Over time, the puritanical approach to defining, correcting, and punishing juvenile delinquency came under attack. Not only had these severe forms of juvenile justice failed to control juvenile delinquency, but also they were portrayed as primitive and brutal. In 1825, a progressive social movement known as the Child Savers changed the course of the response to juvenile delinquency and made corrections a primary part of it. Rather than framing juvenile delinquency as an issue of sin and morality, the Child Savers attributed it to environmental factors, such as poverty, immigration, poor parenting, and urban environments. Based on the doctrine of parens patriae, which means the state is the ultimate guardian of children, the Child Savers sought to remove children from the adverse environments that they felt contributed to children’s delinquency.

The Child Savers actively pursued the passage of legislation that would permit placing children in reformatories, especially juvenile paupers. The goal of removing children from extreme poverty was admirable, but resulted in transforming children into persons without legal rights. Children were placed into factories, poorhouses, and orphanages where they were generally treated poorly and where almost no attention was given to their individual needs. The first and most infamous of these facilities was the New York House of Refuge, which opened in 1825 and served to incarcerate thousands of children and adolescents viewed as threats to public safety and social order.

Another curious response to juvenile delinquency during this era was the use of transport. For example, between the 1850s and the Great Depression, approximately 250,000 abandoned children from New York were placed on orphan trains and relocated to locations in the West where they were adopted by Christian farm families. The process of finding new homes for the children was haphazard. At town meetings across the country, farming families took their pick of the orphan train riders. Children who were not selected got back on board the train and continued to the next town. The children who were selected and those who adopted them had one year to decide whether they would stay together. If either decided against it, the child would be returned, boarded on the next train out of town, and offered to another family.

Progressive reformers continued looking for new solutions to the growing problem of juvenile delinquency. Their most significant remedy was the creation of the juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois, in July 1899 via the passage of the Chicago Juvenile Court Act. The juvenile court attempted to closely supervise problem children, but unlike the houses of refuge, this new form of supervision was to more often occur within the child’s own home and community, not in institutions. In the juvenile court, procedures were civil as opposed to criminal, perhaps because social workers spearheaded the court movement. They thought that children had to be treated, not punished, and the judge was to be a sort of wise and kind parent. The new court segregated juvenile from adult offenders at all procedural stages.

The juvenile court reaffirmed and extended the doctrine of parens patriae. This paternalistic philosophy meant that reformers gave more attention to the “needs” of children than to their rights. In their campaign to meet the needs of children, the Child Savers enlarged the role of the state to include the handling of children in the judicial system. Because of its innovative approach, the juvenile court movement spread quickly, and by 1945, all states had specialized juvenile courts to respond to juvenile delinquency.

As juvenile courts across the United States continued in operation, two concerns emerged that would later motivate additional reforms. First, the informality of juvenile proceedings was seen as good in that justice could be tailored to the needs of individual youth. However, the informality also invited disparate treatment of offenders. The second and related point was that the juvenile court needed to become more formalized to ensure due process rights of delinquents that were comparable to the due process rights of adults in the criminal courts. These rights were established in a series of landmark cases during the 1960s and early 1970s.

An important milestone in the history of juvenile delinquency occurred in 1974 with the passage of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. This act was the most sweeping change in juvenile justice since the founding of the juvenile court. There were five major points of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. First, it mandated the decriminalization of status offenders so that they were not considered delinquent. Second, it mandated the deinstitutionalization of juvenile corrections so that only the most severe juvenile delinquents would be eligible for confinement. In addition, the act mandated that status offenders should not be institutionalized and that juveniles in adult jails and prisons should be separated by sight and sound from adults. Third, it broadened use of diversion as an alternative to formal processing in juvenile court. Fourth, it continued application of due process constitutional rights to juveniles. Fifth, it created the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), which funded research to evaluate juvenile justice programs and disseminated research findings on the juvenile justice system.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was modified in 1977, 1980, 1984, 1988, and as recently as 2002. For instance, in 1980 the act specified the jail and lockup removal requirement, which meant that juveniles could not be detained or confined in adult jails or lockups. Adult facilities had a 6-hour grace period to ascertain the age of the offender or transport the youth to a juvenile facility. (Rural jails had up to 48 hours.) In 1988, the act specified the disproportionate minority confinement requirement, which required juvenile corrections to gather data on the racial composition of their population compared to the racial composition of the state. In 2002, this was changed to disproportionate minority contact, whereby racial data were mandated for all aspects of the juvenile justice system. Correctional systems must comply with OJJDP guidelines to remain eligible for federal allocations from the Formula Grants Program.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing until the early to mid-1990s, the United States experienced dramatic increases in the most serious forms of juvenile delinquency, such as murder, and an increasingly visible juvenile gang problem in major American cities. As a result, states enacted more legislation that targeted youths involved in the most serious types of juvenile delinquency. During the 1990s, 45 states made it easier to transfer juvenile offenders to adult criminal courts. Thirty-one states expanded the sentencing options to include blended sentencing, which allows juvenile courts to combine juvenile and adult punishment that is tailored to the needs of the individual offender. For instance, juvenile courts can combine a juvenile disposition with a criminal sentence that is suspended. If the delinquent complies with the juvenile disposition, the criminal sentence is never imposed. If not, the youth is eligible to receive the adult sentence.

In 34 states, there are “once an adult, always an adult” provisions that specify that once a youth has been tried as an adult, any subsequent offenses must also be waived to criminal court. Laws have been modified to reduce or remove traditional juvenile court confidentiality provisions and make juvenile records more open in 47 states. In 22 states, laws have increased the role of victims of juvenile crimes by allowing them more voice in the juvenile justice process.

Nationwide, adolescents account for about 1% of new court commitments to adult state prisons. This means that more than 4,000 adolescents are in adult prisons because they have been convicted of the most serious forms of delinquency, which includes offenses such as armed robbery, assault, burglary, murder, and sexual assault. More punitive measures such as waivers are justified based on the serious violence and chronic delinquencies of the most serious offenders; however, some of these provisions carry unintended consequences. For example, research suggests that youths who are waived to criminal court and receive adult punishments ultimately have higher recidivism levels than youths that receive juvenile court dispositions.

Over the past 20 years, American society has also struggled to understand the place of capital punishment as a way to punish the most violent juvenile delinquents. In 1988, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held that imposing the death penalty on a person who was 15 years at the time of his or her crime violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. One year later, in Stanford v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that no consensus exists that forbids the sentencing to death of a person that commits capital murder at age 16 or 17. That changed in 2005 with the landmark case Roper v. Simmons, which rendered capital punishment unconstitutional as applied to persons under age 18. The Roper decision invalidated the death penalty for juveniles, which is a far different approach from earlier eras. According to the Supreme Court, several factors contributed to a changing consensus about applying the death penalty to juveniles, including the fact that several states had abolished the juvenile death penalty in the intervening years since Stanford; most states that retained the juvenile death penalty basically never used it; the juvenile death penalty was not used in most parts of the Western world; and there was greater appreciation for the developmental differences between adolescent and adults in terms of decision making, emotional and behavioral control, and other neurocognitive factors that influence criminal decision making.

It is conventional wisdom within criminology to lament the increasing toughness or punitive stance that society takes toward juvenile delinquents, primarily through the process of transfer to criminal court. But it should be noted that the last 40 years of juvenile justice reflect a profound commitment to due process and the legal rights of adolescents, the abolishment of the juvenile death penalty, and a general hands-off policy stance toward status and low-level delinquents. Indeed, the juvenile justice system and particularly juvenile corrections have noted the diversity of the juvenile delinquent population and have focused resources disproportionately toward the most serious youths.

Any idea about the causes, extent, and correlates of juvenile delinquency is essentially a theory, such as equating juvenile delinquency with sin and violating God’s law. For more than two centuries, academic criminologists have developed a host of theories to explain juvenile delinquency. The major difference among them relates to the academic discipline in which the theorist was trained. The various disciplines, such as economics, psychology, and sociology, have differing assumptions about humans and human behavior, and these result in different conceptualizations about what causes juvenile delinquency. This section broadly examines theories of juvenile delinquency from economics, psychology, and—the most common theoretical approach—sociology.

Some of the earliest theories of juvenile delinquency were economic in their perspective. Economic theories are known as classical theories. They generally state that juveniles are rational, intelligent people who have free will, which is the ability to make choices. Young people calculate the costs and benefits of their behavior before they act. Delinquency is the result of juveniles imagining greater gains coming from breaking the law than from obeying it. In the same way, children and adolescents that skip school first weigh the likelihood of getting caught against the potential fun they will have. Similarly, juveniles who commit serious crime weigh the pleasure they imagine they will receive against potentially being arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sent to prison. Since behavior is a conscious decision that youths make, they may be held responsible for their choices and their consequences.

One of the major figures in classical theory is Cesare Beccaria (1764-1963), who formulated his ideas about crime control during the 18th century when the criminal justice systems throughout Europe were cruel and ruthless and exercised a callous indifference toward human rights. People were punished for crimes against religion, such as atheism and witchcraft, and for crimes against the state, such as criticizing political leaders. Worse yet, “offenders” were rarely told why they were punished. No one was exempt. Any person could be hauled off to jail at any time, for any reason. Wealthy persons were generally spared the most torturous and degrading punishments, which were reserved for ordinary citizens who sometimes were burned alive, whipped, mutilated, or branded.

These conditions inspired Beccaria to write an essay titled “On Crimes and Punishments,” where he laid the framework for a new system of justice that emphasized humanity, consistency, and rationality. According to Beccaria, the system would follow these principles:

• Social action should be based on the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
• Crime is an injury to society, and the only rational measure of crime is the extent of the injury.
• Crime prevention is more important than punishment. Laws must be published so that the citizenry can understand and support them.
• In criminal procedure, secret accusations and torture must be abolished. There should be speedy trials, and accused persons should have every right to present evidence in their defense.
• The purpose of punishment is to prevent crime. Punishment must be swift, certain, and severe. Penalties must be based on the social damage caused by the crime. There should be no capital punishment. Life imprisonment is a better deterrent. Capital punishment is irreparable and makes no provision for mistakes.
• Imprisonment should be widely used, but prison conditions should be improved through better physical quarters and by separating and classifying inmates as to age, sex, and criminal histories.

Another important classical theorist was the English economist Jeremy Bentham who, observing that people naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain, believed that the “best” punishment was one that would produce more pain than whatever pleasure the offender would receive from committing the crime. In other words, punishment must “fit the crime,” and no single punishment was always best. Instead, a variety of punishments should be used.

Today, classical theory is generally known as rational choice theory, which again asserts that people are rational and make calculated choices regarding what they are going to do before they act. Juvenile delinquents collect, process, and evaluate information about the crime and make a decision whether to commit it after they have weighed the costs and benefits of doing so. Juvenile delinquency represents a well-thought-out decision whereby delinquents decide where to commit the crime, who or what to target, and how to execute it.

Psychological theories explain juvenile delinquency with individual-level constructs that exist inside of all people and interact with the social world. For instance, behavioral theory proposes that behavior reflects people’s interactions with others throughout their lifetime. A leading behaviorist was the psychologist B. F. Skinner (1953), who theorized that children learn conformity and deviance from the punishments and reinforcements that they receive in response to their behavior. He believed the environment shapes behavior and that children identify those aspects of their environment they find pleasing and which ones are painful; their behavior is the result of the consequences it produces. He concluded that children and adolescents repeat rewarded behavior and terminate punished behavior.

Similarly, Albert Bandura (1977) argues that learning and experiences couple with values and expectations to determine behavior. In his social learning theory, Bandura suggests that children learn by modeling and imitating others. For example, children learn to be aggressive from their life experiences and learn aggression in different ways—for instance, by seeing parents argue, watching their friends fight, viewing violence on television and in movies, and listening to violent music. What children learn is that aggression is sometimes acceptable and can produce the desired outcome. The ideas of Skinner and Bandura would later be adopted by sociologists.

According to psychodynamic theory, unconscious mental processes that developed in early childhood control the personality, and these mental processes influence behavior, including juvenile delinquency. The main author of this theory is Sigmund Freud (1925), who theorized that the personality consists of three parts: the id, ego, and superego. The id, which is present at birth, consists of blind, unreasoning, instinctual desires and motives. The id represents basic biological and psychological drives and does not differentiate between fantasy and reality. The id also is antisocial and knows no rules, boundaries, or limitations. If the id is left unchecked, it will destroy the person. The ego grows from the id and represents the problem-solving dimension of the personality. It deals with reality, differentiates it from fantasy, and teaches children to delay gratification because acting on impulse will get them into trouble. The superego develops from the ego and is the moral code, norms, and values the child has acquired. The superego is responsible for feelings of guilt and shame and is more closely aligned with the conscience. In mentally healthy children, the three parts of the personality work together. When the parts are in conflict, children may become maladjusted and ready for delinquency. Freud did not write specifically about delinquency. However, he did influence criminologists, who took his ideas and applied them to the study of crime. The lasting importance of Freud and psychodynamic theory is evidenced in the way that early childhood experiences and mental processes have figured prominently in studies of human behavior.

The psychological theory that most explicitly matches the thinking patterns and personality of the individual with his or her subsequent involvement in juvenile delinquency is psychopathy. Psychopathy is a clinical construct that is usually referred to as a personality disorder defined by a set of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and behavioral characteristics that manifest in wide-ranging antisocial behaviors. The characteristics of psychopathy read like a blueprint for juvenile delinquency. Psychopathic persons are impulsive, grandiose, emotionally cold, manipulative, callous, arrogant, dominant, irresponsible, short-tempered individuals who tend to violate social norms and victimize others without guilt or anxiety.

Psychopathy is a controversial theory, and much disagreement centers on whether the theory should be applied toward children and adolescent delinquents. At the heart of psychopathy is the complete lack of feeling for other people evidenced by callous-unemotional traits, remorselessness, and the absence of empathy. Psychopathic persons do not experience the feelings that naturally inhibit the acting out of violent impulses, and their emotional deficiency is closely related to general under-arousal and the need for sensation seeking. Because of this inability to morally connect to other people, psychopathic persons are distinct from other offender groups. Research has also shown that the callous and unemotional traits that are indicators of psychopathy are present early in life during childhood, and these traits are mostly genetic in origin. In this way, psychopathy does not just implicate the personality and character of a person but also his or her genes.

Sociological theories of juvenile delinquency point to societal factors and social processes that in turn affect human behavior. Unlike other explanations, sociology explains people’s behavior using characteristics beyond the individual. Mostly, sociological theories assert that certain negative aspects of neighborhoods and society in general serve as structural inducements for young people to resort to juvenile delinquency. In this way, sociological theories tend to ignore or deny individual-level psychological differences that might partially explain who engages in delinquency.

One of the most prominent sociological theories is the social disorganization theory developed by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1942), who suggested that juvenile delinquency was caused by the neighborhood in which a person lived. Instead of focusing on individual traits, Shaw and McKay studied the impact of the kinds of places, such as neighborhoods, that created conditions favorable to delinquency. They discovered that delinquency rates declined the farther one moved from the center of the city. They reached this conclusion after dividing Chicago into five concentric circles or zones. At the center was the Loop, the downtown business district where property values were highest (Zone I). Beyond the Loop was the zone of transition (Zone II) containing an inner ring of factories and an outer ring that included places of vice, such as gambling, prostitution, and the like. Zones III and IV were suburban residential areas, and Zone V extended beyond the suburbs. Delinquency rates were highest in the first two zones and declined steadily as one moved farther away from the city center.

Neighboring railroads, stockyards, and industries made Zone II the least desirable residential area, but also the cheapest one. Because of this, people naturally gravitated to this area if they were poor, as many new immigrants to the United States were. What did these findings say about juvenile delinquency? Shaw and McKay interpreted the findings in cultural and environmental terms. The rates of juvenile delinquency remained stable in certain Chicago neighborhoods, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the people who lived there. Areas that were high in juvenile delinquency at the turn of the 20th century were also high in juvenile delinquency several decades later, even though many of the original residents had moved away or died. Shaw and McKay explained juvenile delinquency via the following four points.

First, run-down areas create social disorganization. Cities such as Chicago were expanding industrially, their populations were increasing, and segregation was forcing new immigrants into the slums. These immigrants were not familiar with the city’s geography or culture; they arrived with different languages and work experiences; and they immediately faced new and overwhelming problems, including poverty, disease, and confusion.

Second, social disorganization fosters cultural conflicts. In low-delinquency areas of the city, there typically was agreement among parents on which values and attitudes were the “right” ones, with general consensus on the importance of education, constructive leisure, and other child-rearing issues. Local institutions, such as the PTA, churches, and neighborhood centers, reinforced these conventional values. No such consistency prevailed in high-delinquency areas. The norms of a variety of cultures existed side by side, creating a state of normative ambiguity, or anomie (cultural conflict). This condition was aggravated by the presence of individuals who promoted an unconventional lifestyle and defined behaviors such as theft as an acceptable way to acquire wealth. This value system could count on the support of criminal gangs, rackets, and semi-legitimate businesses.

Third, cultural conflict allows delinquency to flourish. Children raised in low-socioeconomic, high-delinquency areas were exposed to both conventional and criminal value systems. They saw criminal activities and organizations in operation daily. Successful criminals passed on their knowledge to younger residents, who then taught it to even younger children. Delinquency became a tradition in certain neighborhoods through the process of cultural transmission, where criminal values are passed from one generation to the next. Fourth, allowed to flourish, delinquency becomes a full-time career. Children in these Chicago neighborhoods dabbled in initially trivial forms of juvenile delinquency, but their acts became increasingly serious and prone to gang delinquency.

Edwin Sutherland (1947) developed differential association theory, which is one of the most popular and enduring theories of juvenile delinquency. The theory consists of nine principles. First, Sutherland asserted that delinquent behavior is learned and not inherited. Biological and hereditary factors are rejected as explanations for the cause of delinquency. Only sociological factors explain why youth commit delinquency. Second, delinquent behavior is learned through interaction with others by way of communication. The communication can be either verbal or nonverbal. Third, learning occurs in intimate groups. It is in small, face-to-face gatherings that children learn to commit delinquency. Fourth, in small, intimate groups, children learn techniques for committing crime, as well as the appropriate motives, attitudes, and rationalizations. The learning process involves exposure not only to the techniques of committing offenses, but also to the attitudes or rationalizations that justify those acts. Fifth, the specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal code as being favorable or unfavorable. The term definitions refers to attitudes.

Sixth, a juvenile becomes delinquent due to an excess of definitions favorable to the violation of law over definitions unfavorable to the violation of law. This sixth principle is the core of the theory. A parent who even hints through words or actions that it is acceptable to fight, treat women as potential conquests, cheat on income tax returns, or lie may promote juvenile delinquency in children unless these statements are outnumbered by definitions or attitudes that favor obeying the law—for example, driving the speed limit. Definitions favorable to the violation of law can be learned from both criminal and noncriminal people.

Seventh, the tendency toward delinquency will be affected by the frequency, duration, priority, and intensity of learning experiences. The longer, earlier, more intensely, and more frequently youths are exposed to attitudes about delinquency, both pro and con, the more likely they will be influenced. Sutherland used the term intensity to refer to the degree of respect a person gives to a role model or associate. Thus, correctional officers are not likely to become criminals despite the positive things inmates say about living a life of crime. The reason is that officers do not respect the inmates and therefore do not adopt their beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Eight, learning delinquent behavior involves the same mechanisms involved in any other learning. While the content of what is learned is different, the process for learning any behavior is the same. Ninth, criminal behavior and noncriminal behavior are expressions of the same needs and values. In other words, the goals of delinquents and nondelinquents are similar. What is different are the means they use to pursue their goals.

Decades of research supported the general claims of differential association and what is more broadly known as social learning theory. One of the strongest indicators of juvenile delinquency, for example, is the number of delinquent peers that an individual has. Youths that do not have delinquent peer associations tend not to be involved in juvenile delinquency. On the other hand, youths with many delinquent friends, such as adolescents that are involved in delinquent gangs, are significantly likely to commit status and delinquent offenses.

The other major sociological theory of juvenile delinquency is social control theory. This theory can be traced to 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who believed that human beings are naturally aggressive, argumentative, shy creatures in search of glory that would naturally use violence to master other men, their wives, and their children. This profile described all men, not simply criminals. In Hobbes’s view, human beings were basically bad and at the very least, self-interested at the expense of others. Because of their fundamentally “bad” nature, a strong state or government was needed to strike fear into their hearts and punish them severely when they broke the law. Twentieth-century criminologists expanded upon Hobbes’s ideas and created social control theory. These theorists assumed that without controls, children would break the law. From this perspective, juvenile delinquency was expected behavior. Rather than look for factors that push children into delinquency, the purpose of social control theory is to identify the factors that stop, insulate, or prevent children from participating in delinquency in the first place. In social control theory, what must be explained is why most children conform to society’s rules most of the time. It is taken for granted that children break rules. The real question is, why do children not commit crime?

Arguably the most important social control theory is Travis Hirschi’s (1969) version, which is called social bond theory. A social bond describes a person’s connection to society and consists of four elements: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Each component of the social bond forms its own continuum, ranging from low to high. When the continua are merged, they provide a gauge of how strongly a person is tied or bonded to society. The stronger the bond, the less likely the youth will commit juvenile delinquency. Hirschi asserted that the best predictor of delinquent behavior was a youth’s attachments to parents, schools, and peers, which are the primary agents of socialization. Decades of criminological research have consistently reported that children who are strongly tied to parents are less likely to become delinquent. In addition, their positive feelings promote acceptance of the parents’ values and beliefs. These children avoid juvenile delinquency because such behavior would jeopardize their parents’ affection. Belief in the moral validity of law also has been found to reduce the likelihood that a juvenile will commit crime. Hirschi maintains that in the United States, there is one belief system that centers on conventional values. From this perspective, there are no subcultures that regard theft and assault as proper and permissible, which is contrary to the claims of cultural deviance theories. Belief in the moral validity of law does seem to reduce the likelihood of committing crime.

The commitment component of the social bond is about success, achievement, and ambition. Social bond theory proposes that ambition or motivation to achieve keeps juveniles on the “straight and narrow” path because they know that getting into trouble will hurt their chances of success. In other words, children have a stake in conformity. The more time and energy they have invested in building an education, a career, or a reputation, the less likely they will risk their accomplishments by committing juvenile delinquency. Research examining the importance of commitment has reported that children who are more heavily invested in conventional activities are less likely to be delinquent.

Involvement in conventional activities has been seen as a way of preventing juvenile delinquency as illustrated by the popular phrase “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” The notion that people need to be involved in society and otherwise kept busy has inspired politicians and city planners to call for more and better playgrounds and afterschool sports programs to keep children off the streets. If these facilities are available, young people will have less time to engage in delinquent behavior. Unfortunately, involvement does not have as much impact on preventing delinquency as other components of the bond to society. This is because delinquency is not a full-time job. It requires so little time that anyone, no matter how involved in conventional activities, can find time for juvenile delinquency if he or she wants to.

There are many other theories of juvenile delinquency stemming from an array of academic disciplines. But the fields of economics, psychology, and sociology have been the most visible disciplinary starting points for understanding why young people commit criminal acts.

Juvenile delinquents are a diverse group of young people that varies in terms of the severity of delinquent acts they commit, the frequency with which they commit delinquent acts, how early they begin their delinquent career, and how long they commit delinquency. For many youths, juvenile delinquency is a short-lived flirtation that goes away as quickly as it emerges. It is common and even normal for adolescents to engage in trivial forms of misbehavior and delinquency as they mature through adolescence and enter adulthood. However, for some youths, juvenile delinquency has a more troubling meaning. Several decades of research have shown that a small subset of youths—comprising approximately 5% to 10% of the population—constitute serious, violent, and chronic offenders. Although this group is statistically small, they account for more than half of the juvenile delinquency occurring in a population and even greater levels of the most violent offenses, such as murder, rape, and armed robbery. Researchers have provided evidence of this group using samples from across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Because of the empirical consistency with which the small group of serious delinquents appears in crime data, criminologists have developed theories and helped to influence public policies that are tailored to the various needs and risk profiles of different types of juvenile delinquents.

For example, in 1993, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) published the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders, which is a research-based framework of strategic responses to help local and state juvenile justice systems respond to delinquency. Two years later, the OJJDP conducted a national training and assistance initiative to put the Comprehensive Strategy into place. The Comprehensive Strategy has two main components, prevention and graduated sanctions. Prevention targets youths that are at risk for juvenile delinquency and attempts to enhance their prosocial development by focusing on healthy and nurturing families, safe communities, school attachment, prosocial peer relations, personal development and life skills, and healthy lifestyle choices. In other words, prevention provides education and guidance on the very factors that will insulate youths from selecting a delinquent career. Graduated sanctions, which is the second component of the Comprehensive Strategy, target the same prosocial developmental points but for a different target population of youths—those that have already begun their delinquent career.

The Comprehensive Strategy is multidisciplinary and uses the range or continuum of sanctions that exists in the juvenile justice system to address the needs of the range of youthful offenders, from those first experimenting with problem behaviors to those with sustained and violent records. It is guided by six principles: (1) strengthening the family in its primary responsibilities to instill moral values and provide support and guidance to children; (2) supporting core social institutions, such as schools, churches, and community organizations, to help develop capable, mature, and responsible youth; (3) promoting delinquency prevention as the most cost-effective approach to reducing juvenile delinquency; (4) intervening immediately and effectively when delinquent behavior first emerges to prevent it from becoming worse; (5) establishing a system of graduated sanctions that holds each juvenile offender accountable, protects public safety, and provides programs and services that meet treatment needs; and (6) identifying and controlling the small percentage of serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders who commit the majority of felony offenses.

What happens if nothing is done to prevent or intervene in delinquent careers once they are under way? A study by Kimberly Kempf-Leonard and her colleagues (Kempf-Leonard, Tracy, & Howell, 2001) is telling. Kempf-Leonard et al. studied more than 27,000 delinquent careers from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study and followed the youths until age 27. Among youth that had been serious delinquents, 48% were arrested as adults. For violent delinquents, 53%were arrested as adults. For chronic delinquents, 59% were arrested during adulthood. For those that were serious and chronic juvenile offenders, 63% were arrested during adulthood. For violent and chronic delinquents, over 63% were arrested as adults. In short, the deeper a youth becomes entrenched in his or her delinquency, the more likely antisocial behavior will be a lifelong problem.

V. Conclusion

Juvenile delinquency is a tremendous burden on society, and the most antisocial youths impose staggering costs in terms of victimization and correctional fees. A recent study by Brandon Welsh and his colleagues (2008) is illustrative. Welsh and his collaborators estimated the victimization costs created by the self-reported delinquency of 503 boys from the Pittsburgh Youth Study and produced several important findings. The cohort reported 12,514 crimes or about 25 crimes each. These crimes resulted in victimizations that ranged from $89 million to $110 million stemming from victims’ pain, suffering, and lost quality of life. The 34 chronic offenders averaged 142 crimes, which was nearly 10 times the criminal activity of other delinquents, and this group imposed 5 to 8 times the victimization costs of nonchronic offenders. Other research has shown that chronic criminal offenders, nearly all of whom began their career as serious juvenile delinquents, cost society more than $1 million per offender. In this way, juvenile delinquency will continue to be an area of intense criminological study because of the various costs that it imposes, the ways that it is viewed as a social indicator, and its relationship to more serious and violent forms of antisocial behavior.

Bibliography:

• Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Beccaria, C. (1963). On crimes and punishments (Henry Paolucci, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. (Original work published 1764)
• Cleckley, H. (1941). The mask of sanity. St. Louis, MO: Mosby. Freud, S. (1925). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press.
• Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Howell, J. C. (2003). Diffusing research into practice using the comprehensive strategy for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 1, 219–245.
• In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967).
• In re Winshop, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).
• Kempf-Leonard, K., Tracy, P. E., & Howell, J. C. (2001). Serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders: The relationship of delinquency career types to adult criminality. Justice Quarterly, 18, 449–478.
• Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966).
• Lahey, B. B., Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (Eds.). (2003). Causes of conduct disorder and juvenile delinquency. New York: Guilford Press.
• Loeber, R., & Farrington, D. P. (Eds.). (1998). Serious and violent juvenile offenders: Risk factors and successful interventions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528 (1971).
• Moffitt, T. E. (1993). “Life-course persistent” and “adolescence-limited” antisocial behavior: A developmental typology. Psychological Review, 100, 674–701.
• Platt, A. (1969). The Child Savers: The invention of delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005).
• Rothman, D. J. (1970). The discovery of the asylum. Boston: Little, Brown.
• Schall v. Martin, 467 U.S. 253 (1984).
• Shaw, C. R., & McKay, H. D. (1942). Juvenile delinquency and urban areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan.
• Sutherland, E. H. (1947). Principles of criminology. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
• Welsh, B. C., Loeber, R., Stevens, B. R., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., Cohen, M. A., & Farrington, D. P. (2008). Costs of juvenile crime in urban areas: A longitudinal perspective. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 6, 3–27.
• Wilson, J. Q., & Herrnstein, R. J. (1985). Crime and human nature: The definitive study of the causes of crime. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Wolfgang, M. E., Figlio, R. M., & Sellin, T. (1972). Delinquency in a birth cohort. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

NCJRS Virtual Library

Introduction to juvenile delinquency - text and readings, additional details.

610 Opperman Drive , P.O. Box 64526 , St Paul , MN 55164 , United States

No download available

Availability, related topics.