On juvenile delinquency in America

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.

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Youth violence has long been a contentious and perplexing issue in current debates on crime policy, not the least because of the sharp increase in violence among young minority males from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Featuring articles by leading American and European scholars from many fields, this book overviews policy issues and research developments concerning crime and violence among the young.

For generations, scholars, law enforcement personnel, politicians and the media have tried to understand and explain youth gangs and violence. This insightful collection contains the work of leading scholars, integrating previously published articles with new material to provide the most comprehensive information about the status of American youth gangs. The topics are grouped in four sections: The first section explores the issues and ramifications of current terminology and survey information. In the second section, nontraditional gangs, such as female gangs and hybrid gangs, are disucssed. The third section attempts to examine gang activities objectively and place them in a proper perspective. The final section looks at historical and current response techniques to youth gangs, such as suppression, prevention and legal injunctions.

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.