Youth Violence in Latin America


Book Description

This volume provides a systematic overview of the contemporary Latin American youth violence phenomenon. The authors focus specifically on youth gangs, juvenile justice issues, and applied research concerns, providing a rounded and balanced exploration of this increasingly important topic.




American Youth Violence


Book Description

On juvenile delinquency in America




Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice


Book Description

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.




Youth Crime in America


Book Description

This new book introduces readers to the latest developments in delinquency theory and research by providing a clear, jargon-free, in-depth treatment of the most recent and significant writings in the field. It provides wide coverage of youth crime, delinquency, and the justice system without overwhelming readers with dual and often confusing statements. Streamlined and easily readable, Youth Crime in America covers such topics as: social issues and youth crime; official data and victim surveys; American adolescence today; theories of youth crime; Chicago School and strain/anomie theories; social control and sensation seeking; the family and youth crime; schools; peers; the police; the juvenile court system; and corrections and prevention. A useful guide for those in the youth criminal justice system, as well as educators, therapists, and others that work with adolescents.




The War on Kids


Book Description

Despite inventing the juvenile court a little more than a century ago, the United States has become an international outlier in its juvenile sentencing practices. The War on Kids explains how that happened and how policymakers can correct the course of juvenile justice today.







Encyclopedia of Juvenile Violence


Book Description

From concerns about juveniles' incorrigibility at the turn of the century to school violence in the 1990s, adults have attempted to understand, control, and prevent juvenile violence. Yet, juvenile violence takes many forms, including both violence by juveniles and violence against juveniles, and has various causes and consequences. Since juvenile violence cannot be understood without examining the social context of a given time, this comprehensive encyclopedia provides a historical overview of many significant time periods and offers entries about many types of juvenile violence. It covers competing theories of youth violence; issues such as gender, race, and educational status; and the criminal justice system's methods for dealing with both victims and offenders over time. Additionally, several topics that receive little attention in traditional volumes about juvenile violence, such as hazing, systemic violence in schools, peaceable schools, are covered in these pages. Each entry utilizes current sources, making the book as up-to-date as possible. The front and back matter offer important information, including a chronological list of significant events related to juvenile violence and book and Web resources. Authors represent many different fields, including Sociology, Psychology, Education, History, Social Work, Political Science, Policing, and English. This offers readers a diversity of perspectives and information from a variety of sources. Confronting a difficult and often-misunderstood subject, this encyclopedia is essential to a better understanding of juvenile violence.







The Rage of Innocence


Book Description

A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book Review Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents. Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.




The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America


Book Description

A compelling case can be made that violent crime, especially after the 1960s, was one of the most significant domestic issues in the United States. Indeed, few issues had as profound an effect on American life in the last third of the twentieth century. After 1965, crime rose to such levels that it frightened virtually all Americans and prompted significant alterations in everyday behaviors and even lifestyles. The risk of being mugged was a concern when Americans chose places to live and schools for their children, selected commuter routes to work, and planned their leisure activities. In some locales, people were afraid to leave their dwellings at any time, day or night, even to go to the market. In the worst of the post-1960s crime wave, Americans spent part of each day literally looking back over their shoulders. The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America is the first book to comprehensively examine this important phenomenon over the entire postwar era. It combines a social history of the United States with the insights of criminology and examines the relationship between rising and falling crime and such historical developments as the postwar economic boom, suburbanization and the rise of the middle class, baby booms and busts, war and antiwar protest, the urbanization of minorities, and more.