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.

The first special juvenile court was created in 1899. Since then,juvenile justice has had a chequered history, and is now more controversial than ever. Should our treatment of young offenders differ in its aims or principles from that of adult offenders? What role should ideas of punishment or retribution play? Should our aims be rehabilitative and educative rather than punitive? Should we divert young offenders from the criminal justice system altogether, opting for 'restorative' rather than 'retributive' justice? These questions are addressed in this inter-disciplinary volume, which brings together criminologists, educationalists, psychologists and philosophers. Part I traces the history of juvenile justice, identifying patterns, and signs of what the future might hold. Part II tackles fundamental normative issues of punishment, moral education and restoration, with particular emphasis on the role of communication. Part III attends to the role that such emotions as shame and guilt should play in juvenile justice, paying particular, and critical, attention to Braithwaite's conception of reintegrative shaming.

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

A selection of papers presented at the international conference, Leuven, May 12-14, 1997.

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many others are addressed in this highly engaging guide. Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment, offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. The first critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishment, this book explores – among others – the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice, and the unified theory of punishment. Thom Brooks examines several case studies in detail, including capital punishment, juvenile offending, and domestic abuse. Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and groundbreaking. Punishment is a textbook designed to introduce both undergraduate and postgraduate students to the topic of punishment. It will be essential for undergraduate students in: philosophy, criminal justice, criminology, justice studies, law, politics, and sociology.

Tackling juvenile offending has become a key part of crime reduction strategies. The articles selected for this volume examine juvenile offending from various critical perspectives and represent the work of the most influential international figures in the field. The issues addressed include: the different needs and perspectives of youth offenders; whether offenders should be treated differently from others because of their age; recommendations of policy changes; identification of risk factors; issues surrounding the sentencing of juvenile offenders; and the relevance of restorative justice.

In this book, Slobogin and Fondacaro present their vision for a new juvenile justice system, founded on the evidence at hand and promoting the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. The authors develop their juvenile justice policy proposals effectively by carefully addressing the problems with past policy approches and recent theoretical contributions.