The Panel on Juvenile Crime: Prevention, Treatment, and Control convened a workshop on October 2, 1998, to explore issues related to educational performance, school climate, school practices, learning, student motivation and commitment to school, and their relationship to delinquency. The workshop was designed to bring together researchers and practitioners with a broad range of perspectives on the relationship between such specific issues as school safety and academic achievement and the development of delinquent behavior. Education and Delinquency reviews recent research findings, identifies gaps in knowledge and promising areas of future research, and discusses the need for program evaluation and the integration of empirical research findings into program design.
Juvenile Justice and Schools: Policing, Processing, and Programming examines the complex relationship between educational institutions and the juvenile justice system. Readers learn about factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency, how schools can prevent and manage juvenile delinquency, and how individuals can leverage resources other than police or justice systems in response to behavioral concerns. Each chapter examines a specific topic and demonstrates how the topic intersects with school systems and juvenile justice systems. Dedicated chapters explore poverty and its impact on school readiness; the school-to-prison pipeline; racial and gender disproportionality in school discipline practices; and police presence in schools. Students learn about the juvenile justice system, peer mediation as a means to reduce conflicts, strategies for reducing school violence, anti-bullying programs, and more. Juvenile Justice and Schools is an ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate level courses in sociology, criminology, and criminal justice. It can also be used in minor programs in peace studies, education, and juvenile delinquency.
"It was hard in the beginning; I didn't think I was going to like it."-student"This ain't even a real school, man. This is for discipline."-student"I want to go to college and become a paramedic."-student"Know what you learn in this program? You learn to suck up."-student"The school district would not like what I'm doing here, but I think these kids need it."-history teacher"This is my real ministry."-community liaisonThese are only some of the voices in Law and Order and School, Shira Birnbaum's riveting study of an education and rehabilitation program for troubled teenagers in a Southern city. Locally acclaimed as one of the better programs of its kind in the region, "Academy" exemplifies a new kind of institution, providing transitional school services under contract with both educational and juvenile justice agencies.Birnbaum's narrative focuses on curriculum, teaching, behavior management, and the social organization and culture of the program, offering a close-up view of the everyday classroom interactions that frame student achievement and, ultimately, program outcomes. What do students learn? What do teachers teach? What educational and rehabilitative goals are embedded in official and unofficial policy? What processes inside and outside the building help or hinder the attainment of those goals?As educational and justice agencies look increasingly to private subcontractors to deliver an array of services and growing numbers of young people are channeled into non-traditional educational settings and correctional institutions, it is imperative that educators and the general public understand how these institutions work and what problems their students and staffs encounter. This on-the-ground examination of education within the juvenile justice system will open your eyes to how we educate some of our neediest children. Author note: Shira Birnbaum is an educational consultant working in New York and New Jersey.
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.
Aimed at parents of and advocates for special needs children, explains how to develop a relationship with a school, monitor a child's progress, understand relevant legislation, and document correspondence and conversations.
Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Sociology - Law and Delinquency, grade: A+, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Behavioural Sciences-Criminology Unit), course: Youth, Violence and Delinquency, language: English, abstract: This paper seeks to highlight juvenile delinquency in Trinidad and Tobago particularly within the school system which has become at the centre of attention recently. It explores some of the theories that can be used to explain delinquency in the school system. The author places much attention on the programmes that can be used to alleviate if not eliminate juvenile delinquency in schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago. The challenges and recommendations of these programmes were also highlighted in order to maximize its success.
Schools and Delinquency, first published in 2001, provides a comprehensive review and critique of the current research about the causes of delinquency, substance use, drop-out, and truancy, and the role of the school in preventing these behavior patterns. Examining school-based prevention programs and practices for grades K-12, Denise Gottfredson identifies a broad array of effective strategies improving the school environment, as well as some that specifically target youths at risk of developing problem behaviors. She also explains why several popular school-based prevention strategies are ineffective and should be abandoned. Gottfredson analyzes, within the larger context of the community, the special challenges to effective prevention programming that arise in disorganized settings, identifying ways to overcome these obstacles and to make the most troubled schools safer and more productive environments.
This report serves to assess the Nation¿s progress in addressing juvenile crime. The 2007 data bring some welcome news, as the recent trend of modest increases in juvenile arrests in 2005 and 2006 has been broken. The good news is reflected not only in the 2% decline in overall juvenile arrests and the 3% decline in juvenile arrests for violent crimes from 2006 to 2007 but also in the data for most offense categories, for males and females, and for white and minority youth. However, one area that merits continued attention is disproportionate minority contact with the juvenile justice system. For example, the arrest rate for robbery among black juveniles was more than 10 times that for white youth in 2007. Charts and tables.
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.
