Juvenile Delinquency

With the recent realization of the extent to which adolescents are committing sexual offenses, researchers have attempted to identify valid and reliable assessment instruments for this population. Some such assessment instruments (i.e., plethysmography, self-report) have met with criticism relative to their utility with juvenile offenders. The present study aimed to assess the validity of the Abel Assessment for sexual interest™(AASI) with male adolescents who have molested children. Results indicated that the amount of time male adolescent child molesters viewed slides of children was significantly longer than nonmolesters. Additionally, viewing time of slides of children for male adolescent child molesters was significantly correlated with their number of victims and the number of times they carried out acts of child molestation. These results support the AASI as a valid measure of sexual interest in adolescent male child molesters.

The termination of parental rights of parents with mental disabilities is a growing and crucial issue.  In 2010, an estimated 45.9 million adults in the U.S. had experienced a mental illness in the past year. This represents 20% of the adult population.  More than five million children in the U.S. have a parent with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.  Courts and child welfare systems too often assume that a parent is not amenable to treatment and is a danger to his or her child when strong symptoms of mental turmoil surface.  Some studies report that as many as 70 to 80% of mentally ill parents have lost custody.  Public systems are overwhelmed by this matter in an era of shrinking resources for such systems.  However, often parents with mental health needs are willing to accept treatment, are able to participate in programming, and are worthy of regaining custody. 
• There are gaps in federal and state law on this issue.  The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) requires that state child welfare agencies and courts make “reasonable efforts” towards family reunification before the termination of parental rights (TPR) can take place.  However, federal statutes and case law provide little guidance to states about what “reasonable efforts” means, and states have been left to interpret that concept individually.  Many state statutes even enable a “bypass” of the “reasonable efforts” standard when “clear and convincing” evidence allegedly shows that a parent's mental condition cannot be changed.  Many states likewise place unjust, statutory and common law time limits on family reunification efforts in TPR cases. 
• Gaps in legal scholarship are also evident here.  Legal scholars have begun to discuss the inadequacy of reunification services for mentally challenged parents, the tenuous link between mental health services and child welfare agency action, the need for enhanced attorney and child welfare worker preparation in this arena, and a need for cultural competence in reunification services.  Others have even suggested that there be a rebuttable presumption in favor of family reunification.  However, those discussions lack a sound theoretical basis and a practical application of solutions. 
• As is featured in previous work of this author, a new theoretical framework of Family Systems Theory-- which is utilized in clinical behavioral health and human rights arenas-- must first be applied.  Under this theoretical framework, the vague and outdated “best interests of the child” standard, which is a legal standard used exclusively in family law cases, must be replaced with a more sound standard of “holistic family wellbeing.”  Vulnerability Theory can add credence to this theoretical framework.
• The discussion of reunification services for families featuring parents with mental disabilities should then be conducted utilizing Family Systems Theory and a legal standard of “holistic family wellbeing.”  Under these circumstances, the “family integrity” defended by our highest courts through the “reasonable efforts” provision should be upheld through the delivery of highly effective family reunification services.  The application of Family Systems Theory ultimately requires reform in the law, service delivery, and professional practice.  State and federal legislators must revisit the “reasonable efforts” standard, to include specific statutory language about the types of reunification services required and the need for flexible timelines.  Courts, child welfare agencies, and service providers need to deliver proven reunification services and coordinated mental health treatment.  In specific court cases, attorneys for the parent(s), the child(ren), and the state should focus on “holistic family wellbeing” utilizing collaborative family law and alternative dispute resolution, while advancing the agency of their clients.  Child welfare workers and practitioners likewise require training in advanced methods of conflict resolution and clinical practice.  These recommendations can ensure more effective family law practice and more successful family - serving systems.

During the past decade, experts and scholars in Serbia dedicated a great deal of attention and their academic endeavours to the reform of the juvenile justice system, as well as to the establishment and improvement of a multi-agency mechanism for the protection of children from violence and abuse. At the same time, research into the factors contributing to youth delinquency and violence did not receive the same amount of consideration and enthusiasm. Even though it is impossible to claim that the problem of juvenile crime in Serbia has reached an alarming rate (Ignjatović, 2014), a moderate increase in juvenile crime during the past decade, accompanied by individual criminal offences committed by youth in a particularly brutal fashion, often contributed to the unjustified outbursts of moral panic and received inadequate media attention characterised by a sensationalistic and super-

The historic transformations of the criminal justice system must be justified and interpreted through the effects on criminals (Maruna and Immarigeon, 2011). The push for harsher sentencing policies for juvenile offenders specifically through the use of juvenile waiver to criminal court is one such policy that is not well understood in terms of its effects on offenders, especially in terms of broader outcomes beyond recidivism. We use data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, which consists of a sample of adolescent offenders followed for 7 years postadjudication, to investigate the effect juvenile waiver has on human capital acquisition and yield among 557 adolescents from Maricopa County, Arizona. By using various matching specifications, our findings demonstrate that juveniles transferred to adult court experience no deleterious effects on human capital in terms of educational acquisition compared with similar youth retained in the juvenile system, yet they still earn considerably less income 7 years postadjudication. These results suggest that an important and unintended collateral consequence of juvenile waiver is an increase in social stratification potentially through labeling and labor market discrimination.

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, I will examine the influences shaping the choices of teenagers living in an affluent society during the early days of the Cold War, specifically 1950-1955. I will discuss the contradictions about society, the family unit, and gender roles teenagers attempted to sort out as they moved through adolescence. Secondly, I will focus on two forms of mass media, specifically comic books and movies of the 1950s. Media has always had the power to change and shape the opinion of the youth culture who consumed it. I will discuss the lengths parents, educators, law enforcement, and government officials went to in order to blame the messages media

This article presents the results of the study conducted in six new member states that joined the European Union in 2004 (This article is based on the report “Juvenile delinquency in six new EU member states’, 2008. Participant and co-authors where Jiri Burianek from the Charles University in Prague, Bojan Dekleva from the University of Ljubljana, Andreas Karpadis from the University of Cyprus, Beata Gruszczyńska from the Warsaw University & Institute of Justice of Poland, Vidas Kalpokas from the Law Institute of Lithuania, Anna Markina from the Uni-versity of Tartu and Majone Steketee and Marit Moll from the Verwey-Jonker Institute) (The study has been financially supported by the European Coomunity-Daphne-2 Programme to Combat Violence against Children, Young People and Women.). Five former eastern European countries; the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Cyprus, a southern European country and former British colony in the eastern Mediterranean. Often little is known about the prevalence of youth delinquency in these countries, let alone in a trans-national comparison. In this study we examined the variability in patterns of self-reported youth delinquency behaviour and the relative ranking of the prevalence of different types of juvenile delinquency. We also tested whether a number of sociological and criminological theories on prevalence and occurrence of youth delinquency are valid in these six countries.

At national, state, and local levels, there is increasing recognition of the importance of identifying and responding to the mental health needs of youths in the juvenile justice system, as policymakers and practitioners struggle to find ways to address causes and correlates of juvenile crime and delinquency. The proposed guidelines for mental health assessment provide explicit information about how, why, and when to obtain mental health information on justice youths at each important juncture in processing.

With the progression to more adult-like policies and procedures for youth in the justice system, the right to a jury trial has been extended to young offenders. These youth would not be tried by a jury of their peers, however, but by a jury of adults. The concern is that adult jurors may hold negative attitudes about youth that might influence their decision making in a case involving a young defendant. Two studies examined whether and under what conditions defendant's age affects jurors' decisions about the guilt and sentencing of an accused. In study 1, data were gathered from two samples of jury eligible adults: one university sample and one public sample. Mock jurors read written transcripts of a trial involving a defendant who was presented as either 13, 17, or 25 years of age. Results indicated that the defendant's age had no effect on mock jurors' verdict or their ratings of defendant guilt. However, younger defendants were granted shorter sentences than the adult defendants. In study 2, mock jurors read the same trial presented in study 1 but were asked to deliberate about the case and render group verdicts. These group verdicts did not differ significantly by defendant's age.

Within the framework of stage-environment fit theory, the authors examined the contribution of family relations to adolescent outcomes concurrently and longitudinally, as well as the moderating effects of gender and ethnicity in these associations. Data came from a longitudinal study of European American and African American families from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Results demonstrated that gender and ethnicity influenced both the level and rate of change in family relations and adolescent outcomes. Family relations contributed either concurrently or longitudinally to at least 1 of the adolescent outcomes. The effects of gender and ethnic moderation differed according to both the time frame and the outcome assessed.

Children's aggressive behavior and reading difficulties during early elementary school years are risk factors for adolescent problem behaviors such as delinquency, academic failure, and substance use. This study determined if a comprehensive intervention that was designed to address both of these risk factors could affect teacher, parent, and observer measures of internalizing and externalizing problems. European American (n = 116) and Hispanic (n = 168) children from 3 communities who were selected for aggressiveness or reading difficulties were randomly assigned to an intervention or no-intervention control condition. Intervention families received parent training, and their children received social behavior interventions and supplementary reading instruction over a 2-year period. At the end of intervention, playground observations showed that treated children displayed less negative social behavior than controls. At the end of a 1-year follow-up, treated children showed less teacher-rated internalizing and less parent-rated coercive and antisocial behavior than controls. The study's limitations and implications for prevention are discussed.

From a sample of 1,956 adolescent delinquents referred to us by the court for physical, psychological, psychiatric, educational, and social examinations, 71 delinquents convicted of homicide were matched with 71 nonviolent delinquents by age, race, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES). These two groups were compared on the basis of these evaluations by stepwise discriminant analysis, matched pairs, two-tailed t-tests, and nonparametric tests. Adolescents who kill have a tetrad of symptoms: (1) criminally violent family members; (2) gang membership; (3) severe educational difficulties; and (4) alcohol abuse.

There is little doubt that family factors can influence involvement in delinquency, although the full nature and extent of their influences remain unclear. In recent decades, testosterone has been increasingly implicated as a contributor to adolescent offending. The present study sought to determine whether two important types of familial factors--parental socioeconomic status and amicable parent-child relationships--are interacting with testosterone (and possibly other androgens) to affect delinquency. A large sample of North American college students self-reported their involvement in eight categories of delinquency along with self-ratings of various androgen-promoted traits (e.g., muscularity and low-deep voice), parental social status, and the quality of the relationships they had with parents. In both sexes, parent-child relationships and androgens were significantly associated with delinquency but parental social status was not. Factor analysis revealed that the authors' m...

Objective: We assess the impact of a community-based intervention program for boys 6-11 years old at-risk of antisocial behaviour, and compare changes in behaviour and competence pre-post for intervention and wait-list comparison group. Method: Interested parents called for enrolment. Inclusion required police contact and/or clinical scores (T>69) on Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) or Teacher Report Form (TRF), no developmental delay and English speaking. The program included two core 12-week groups (children's, parents') and optional additional services. Twelve sessions (February 2002 -December 2005 provide pre-post intervention data, boys waiting at least 6 months formed a comparison group (starting April 2005). Outcomes included CBCL and TRF behaviour scales (rule-breaking, aggression, conduct, total problems) and competence. Repeated measures analysis of variance was done. Results: Pre-post outcome comparisons indicated improvements among all boys, with significant differences favouring intervention boys on CBCL behaviour scales, but not TRF outcomes. Effect sizes were small to medium. Persisting high post-behaviour levels, unmeasured variation in additional services, and other design and sampling issues are noted. Conclusions: More rigorously designed program evaluation is required.

Many policy-related reviews of the potential social value of sport and physical activity list the prevention of juvenile delinquency. We examined the relationships among vigorous physical activity, self-esteem, and delinquent behavior among adolescents in a large cross-sectional survey of Ontario adolescents. Data are based on questionnaires from 3,796 students (range 11-20 years) derived from the 2005 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey. Negative binominal regression methods were used to estimate both additive and interactive models predicting delinquent behavior. Vigorous physical activity was positively associated with delinquent behavior; however, this pattern of association was observed only among male adolescents. There was no evidence of a mediating role for self-esteem. Our findings suggest that physical activity is not the solution for reducing juvenile delinquency.

Jugendstrafgefangene gelten als eine hoch belastete Bevölkerungsgruppe. Intraprisonäre Gewalt kann als mögliche Anpassungsstrategie auf die-durch die Haft mitunter verstärkten-Belastungslagen verstanden werden. Der nachfolgende Beitrag stellt umfassend die Ergebnisse aus einer Längsschnittstudie im Jugendstrafvollzug vor. Dabei werden verschiedene Importations-und Deprivationsmerkmale zu Gewalt unter männlichen Jugendstrafgefangenen in Bezug gesetzt, um der Frage nachzugehen, inwiefern Gewalt als eine Anpassungsstrategie an die Haft gesehen werden kann.

Children who experience maltreatment are at increased risk of engaging in delinquent behavior. Although little is known about the mechanisms responsible for this increased risk, the use of substitute care placement and placement instability are often identified as correlates. It is not clear from prior studies, however, whether delinquency precedes or follows placement instability. The current study adds significantly to the literature by identifying selected factors related to child maltreatment and delinquency and disentangling the timing of delinquency petitions relative to movements within the child welfare system. The results indicate that substantiated victims of maltreatment average 47% higher delinquency rates relative to children not indicated for abuse or neglect. In addition, approximately 16% of children placed into substitute care experience at least one delinquency petition compared to 7% of all maltreatment victims who are not removed from their family. Placement instability further increases the risk of delinquency for male foster children, but not for female foster children. Other characteristics related to delinquency include race, age, and recurrence of maltreatment.

The authors of this study tested a selection-influence-de-selection model of depression. This model explains friendship influence processes (i.e., friends' depressive symptoms increase adolescents' depressive symptoms) while controlling for two processes: friendship selection (i.e., selection of friends with similar levels of depressive symptoms) and friendship de-selection (i.e., de-selection of friends with dissimilar levels of depressive symptoms). Further, this study is unique in that these processes were studied both inside and outside the school context. The authors used a social network approach to examine 5 annual measurements of data in a large (N ϭ847) community-based network of adolescents and their friends (M ϭ 14.3 years old at first measurement). Results supported the proposed model: adolescents tend to select friends with similar levels of depression, and friends may increase each other's depressive symptoms as relationships endure. These two processes were most salient outside the school context. At the same time, friendships seemed to be ended more frequently if adolescents' level of depressive symptoms was dissimilar to that of their friends.

This paper frames juvenile justice as a public health concern and articulates a public health approach to intervention with incarcerated youth. The authors review the founding principles of juvenile justice and examine current practices through the lens of public health concepts. Although the knowledge base is incomplete, existing literature suggests dismal outcomes including high recidivism and low productivity; it also reveals promising evidence-based practices that require ongoing scrutiny and continuing elaboration. The authors' main recommendation concerns the application of a three-tiered prevention logic model that encompasses appropriate, evidence-based interventions, national implementation, and empirical validation. We advocate comprehensive, coordinated planning models that focus on outcomes, operate under shared infrastructure, and incorporate data analysis. The transformation of the juvenile justice system will require careful coordination, improved data systems, and multiple levels of focus. We assert that, despite the numerous challenges facing today's juvenile justice system, incarceration presents an opportunity for youth rehabilitation through effective interventions. Systemic reform has the potential both to improve outcomes for youth and to accrue public benefit through crime reduction and cost efficiencies.

In France, the justice system for minors, since the government edict of 2nd February 1945, has been distinguished officially from others by the importance attached to applying an " educative " rather than " repressive " approach. This explicit stance on the part of the political and judicial authorities is reflected in the development of institutions whose policy is one of " educational " supervision. But what does this educational work consist of? In a context marked by the increasing bureaucratization of socio-judicial work, how do officials assess the impact and effectiveness of the policy? Using the results of an ethnography conducted in an open custody unit of the Youth Judicial Protection Service (Protection Judi-ciaire de la Jeunesse) and a children's court in the Paris region, this study shows that professionals attach particular importance to bringing about a change in attitude towards self and others. The understanding is that " successful support " of delinquent minors will encourage them to express a sense of responsibility and guilt for their behaviour, two feelings invested with redemptive, healing abilities. Expression of such sentiments, which are at the heart of the moral economy of juvenile delinquency, is understood to attest to a subjective transformation , which becomes the ultimate justification for the work done with these delinquents as well as a condition for their pardon. The importance attached to eliciting expressions of a sense of responsibility and guilt thus contributes to disciplining sentiments, where the aim is no longer to correct behaviour but persons.

The objective of the present study was to analyze the role of psychopathic traits in juvenile delinquency. Using a sample of 543 young males from the Juvenile Detention Centers of the Portuguese Ministry of Justice and from schools in the Lisbon region, a group of high psychopathic traits (n = 281) and a group of low psychopathic traits (n = 262) were formed based on the Portuguese version of Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). Results showed that youths with high psychopathic traits start engaging in criminal activities earlier in life, come into contact with the justice system earlier in life, and have higher levels of conduct disorder, behavior problems, and delinquent behaviors as well as lower levels of self-esteem.

Sleep, a key indicator of health, has been linked to a variety of indicators of well-being such that people who get an adequate amount generally experience greater well-being. Further, a lack of sleep has been linked to a wide range of negative developmental outcomes, yet sleep has been largely overlooked among researchers interested in adolescent delinquency. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between hours of sleep and delinquent behavior among adolescents by using data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 14,382; 50.2% female, 63.5% white). A series of negative binomial regressions showed that youth who typically sleep seven or fewer hours per night reported significantly more property delinquency than youth who sleep the recommended 8-10 h. Further, youth who reported sleeping 5 or fewer hours per night reported significantly more violent delinquency than youth who reported sleeping the recommended number of hours per night. The findings suggest that sleep is an important, and overlooked, dimension of delinquent behavior and studies that focus on adolescent health should further investigate the effects of insufficient sleep. Finally, the authors recommend that sleep and other relevant health behaviors be considered in the context of more comprehensive approaches to delinquency prevention and intervention.

One of the many factors that must be considered when conducting juvenile risk assessments is treatment amenability. Traditionally, research on risk assessments has focused on treatment needs, likelihood of violence, and likelihood of recidivism. However, there has been little empirical guidance for assessing treatment amenability. This article proposes the possibility of using locus of control as a psychological construct to aid in assessing treatment amenability of juveniles. Through a review of the locus of control literature, the authors found that internal orientation has been found to relate to increased treatment participation, help-seeking behaviors, and positive treatment outcomes. Further, external orientation has been found to be related to poorer treatment participation and outcomes. While there is some debate whether locus of control is a static or a fluid phenomenon, its ability as a predictor of treatment amenability as well as an indicator of treatment response is discussed.

This research analyzes changes made by a juvenile court over five years toward the progressive inclusion of victims as “stakeholders” within the implementation and development of restorative justice practices. Beginning in 1999, the Clark County Juvenile Court (CCJC) in Washington State introduced a Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) program. Subsequently, the court altered diversion and probation practices in ways that provided several significant services to victims, and afforded victims increased decision-making capacity. In doing so, the court also amended how offenders fulfilled their diversion or probation requirements at the court, particularly in relation to its use of VOMs. This research follows the initial inclusion of victims as “stakeholders” within the use of VOMs beginning in 1999, and explicates how and where these stakeholder roles were amended over time until 2005, when the court had largely finalized the structure of victim involvement and participation. The ensuing d...

Adolescents with involvement in the correctional system have significant health risks and needs. Professional guidelines and policies related to health services in correctional settings can help health care providers who work in youth detention facilities and those who see youth for follow-up care after incarceration. Several challenges exist to providing care in detention facilities, but overcoming these barriers to optimally serve youth is critical. When youth are released to their homes, community providers must understand the extent of care offered in detention facilities, the unique considerations for youth on probation, and the aspects of follow-up care that should be addressed.

Youth violence is an important public health problem. During the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, the United States witnessed unprecedented levels of violence among the nation's youths. Homicide remains one of the leading causes of death for young people aged 10 to 24 years. This paper reviews the major trends in homicide victimization and perpetration among youths during the past decade, the developmental pathways of delinquent and violent behavior and the context in which these behaviors occur, and some of the challenges associated with disrupting these pathways and preventing violence. Previous research reveals that multiple pathways lead toward violence and delinquency. Predicting which pathway a youth will follow, or if one will be followed at all, depends to some extent on a host of other biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors present as young people transition from early childhood to adolescence to early adulthood. Preventing violence requires a comprehensive approach that takes into account developmental needs, tasks, and supports.

adjudicated delinquents were convicted ,followed the same general patterns. In light of these findings. it was proposed that the greater proportion of learning-disabled youth among adjudicated juvenile delinquents may be accounted for by differences in the wa_y such children are treated within the juvenile justice system, rather than bj differences in their delinquent behaviors.

An extensive amount of criminological research has focused on the relationship between the inability of adolescents to achieve financial success or middle-class status through legitimate channels and their subsequent involvement in delinquency. This genre of research is commonly recognized as structural-strain theory. As the efficacy of this theory has periodically been questioned, this study addresses some of the methodological and theoretical issues associated with structural-strain theory. Using a sample of 8,338 adolescents from a southern state, we use a structural equations model to test a hypothesized sequence ultimately leading to delinquent behavior. We believe that this method is more appropriate than more traditional methods (e.g., multiple regression) for investigating some of the linkages specified in previous strain models. Our results support structural-strain theory, though the hypothesized model has more predictive power among European American than African American youth. Explanations are given for these differential findings, and recommendations for future studies are suggested.

The inclusion of the Nigerian maritime environment in the piracy hotlist has attracted the interest of researchers, security stakeholders and policy makers into the impact of maritime piracy on the nation's security. Therefore, this sociological discourse on national security and maritime piracy has been made, identifying the nature, impact and policy actions taken so far to curb the menace. The discourse, using secondary data from International Maritime Bureau (IMB) to show the severity and pattern of piracy in Nigeria waterways, and the tenets of the three capability gap thesis, found out that while corruption is the major cause of maritime piracy and insecurity in Nigeria, election malpractices specifically equips the pirates with arms directly or indirectly. The government policies and action, as well as the multinational companies' ransom payments were found to have not been enough in solving the problems and recommendations were therefore made. It was therefore concluded among others that addressing the political interference in maritime security management and intelligence as well as building a strong synergy (among security agencies) could consolidated and enhance security management and intelligence gathering in Nigeria's security sector.

It is well established that US criminal justice systems are, in effect, racialized social systems (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). We have a growing knowledge about the historic and structural roots that have contributed to the mass criminalization of people of color, and the intersecting social forces that lead to the uses of imprisonment as a form of racial-ized social control. We know less about the ways that imprisonment itself may actually itself structure and contribute to the racialized social systems external to prisons that enmesh Black and Brown people in processes of criminalization and social control. Patrick Lopez-Aguado makes a significant contribution to our knowledge on this issue, producing a nuanced, rich, and theoretically sophisticated portrait of the ways that the state structures, produces, and reproduces ideas about the criminal " other " , which in turn feeds systems of mass incarceration. Lopez-Aguado approaches this subject in an empirically original way: intrigued by the California Department of Corrections' policy of racially sorting incarcerated people upon their arrival into the system, Lopez-Aguado chose to locate his research in Fresno, a city in the middle of the state, and thus a " borderland " (p. 15) in the state's " rival prison-based subcultures " (p. 15). Even a site such as Fresno, which ostensibly sits outside of existing boundaries between North and South (most notably demonstrated through the Norteña/os and Sureña/os, who are defined as some of the largest " gangs " in California state prisons) can reflect the racialized consequences of mass incarceration. As Lopez-Aguado details the emergence of the Bulldogs, or the Fresno-based " gangs " , he reveals the ways that artificial boundaries (typically imposed by prison officials) become durable ones, as individuals find that adopting these categories not only becomes a requirement for their safety, but also for their emerging sense of self (and his focus on young people is a particularly important dimension in which to understand this socialization process). Fresno also represents a community hard hit by incarceration, with incar-ceration rates higher than that of the Bay area and Los Angeles, high poverty and unemployment, and deep racial disproportionality in imprisonment rates.

The early childhood antecedents and behavior-problem correlates of monitoring and psychological control were examined in this prospective, longitudinal, multi-informant study. Parenting data were collected during home visit interviews with 440 mothers and their 13-year-old children. Behavior problems (anxiety/depression and delinquent behavior) were assessed via mother, teacher, and/or adolescent reports at ages 8 through 10 years and again at ages 13 through 14. Home-interview data collected at age 5 years were used to measure antecedent parenting (harsh/reactive, positive/proactive), family background (e.g., socioeconomic status), and mother-rated child behavior problems. Consistent with expectation, monitoring was anteceded by a proactive parenting style and by advantageous family-ecological characteristics, and psychological control was anteceded by harsh parenting and by mothers' earlier reports of child externalizing problems. Consistent with prior research, monitoring was associated with fewer delinquent behavior problems. Links between psychological control and adjustment were more complex: High levels of psychological control were associated with more delinquent problems for girls and for teens who were low in preadolescent delinquent problems, and with more anxiety/depression for girls and for teens who were high in preadolescent anxiety/depression.

This article explores the plausibility of the conflicting theoretical assumptions underlying the main criminological perspectives on juvenile delinquents, their peer relations and social skills: the social ability model, represented by Sutherland's theory of differential associations, and the social disability model, represented by Hirschi's control theory. It does so by applying the principles associated with Granovetter's theory of strong and weak ties, drawing out its theoretical implications for the criminological theories and deriving a number of hypotheses. The article uses "strategic research materials" in the form of a data set strongly biased towards the social disability model and containing information on co-offending relations among a population (N = 580) of juveniles in a Swedish town during a three-year period. Results from cross-sectional empirical analyses using, among other things, the Quadratic Assignment Procedure, clearly support the social ability model. The robustness of the initial analyses is checked through longitudinal analyses applying actor-oriented statistical models for network evolution. The article's implications for criminological, as well as multidisciplinary, research are discussed.

O artigo estuda as propostas legislativas brasileiras relativas à punição juvenil à luz da jurisprudência da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos. Nesse sentido, é apresentado um breve painel acerca da conformidade constitucional e internacional do atual sistema brasileiro de Justiça Juvenil; em seguida, analisam-se os projetos legislativos que buscam maior endurecimento punitivo sobre adolescentes para então criticá-los a partir do caso “Mendoza x Argentina” (2013).

Much psychological inquiry has focused on understanding the contribution that exposure to urban violence makes to violent behavior among youth. However, other ways in which these variables may be related have been largely overlooked. This study compared four alternative social–ecological models of the link between community violence exposure and violent behavior to determine the degree to which (1) community violence exposure contributes to violent behavior, (2) violent behavior contributes to community violence exposure, (3) both are consequences of common antecedents, and (4) both are manifestations of the same higher order construct. Two hundred and seventy-seven adolescent offenders were interviewed about family, neighborhood, cognitive, and peer characteristics, in addition to violent behavior and community violence exposure. Results suggest that a plausible way to understand the association between community violence exposure and youth violent behavior is to consider both as representations of a general involvement in violence.