Juvenile Police Research Articles

Juvenile police informants: Friendship, persuasion, and pretense

The use of juvenile informants by the police is believed to be widely practiced but rarely revealed. Ethical issues, legal circumstances, and traditional police secrecy keep teenager involvement in covert law enforcement operations hidden. This article seeks to shed some light on the use of minors in police investigations through a presentation of known cases and semi‐structured interviews with law enforcement agents. Issues addressed include the coercion in the recruitment process and the potential for physical and emotional harm of the informants.

An overview of institutions for juvenile offenders in the Netherlands and their place within the Dutch system of justice1

: This paper provides the reader with a concise overview of juvenile correctional institutions in The Netherlands. These institutions are operated by either state‐ or private‐sector entities as detention centers (providing temporary custody) or remedial centers (when extended treatment is needed). The Netherlands is in the midst of significant changes in its population makeup which have had a corresponding effect on the nature of juvenile institutionalization. Specialized treatment programs and facilities will be explored in this paper. An overview of Dutch juvenile law, police, courts, and delinquency forms the background against which the reader learns about juvenile institutionalization in The Netherlands.

The Juvenile Police the Regulation for Organic Solvent Abuse

The Juvenile Police the Regulation for Organic Solvent Abuse

Early Social Assistance for Juveniles at Risk

In the early 1980's, preventive social welfare intervention programmes for juveniles 'at psycho-social risk' were developed in the Netherlands. This article presents the evaluation of one of these programs-the Prejop prevention experiment in the Hague. Relevant aspects of the method of assistance used in this programme are: early detection of juveniles 'at risk' by detectives of the juvenile police in close collaboration with social workers of the prevention programme, start of social assistance directly after the police contact, quick referral to a branch of the mental health system most capable of handling the problems at hand. For Dutch juveniles the programme reduced family malfunctioning, delinquent behavior and the amount of returns to police notice. For juveniles from ethnic minorities the programme was less beneficial. It is concluded that early social welfare intervention is a promising perspective in the area of delinquency prevention.

Establishment of a Juvenile Police Record:

AbstractAccording to the symbolic interactionist perspective, the juveniles who are most likely to have a police record of arrest are those who conform to police preconceptions about delinquent types, who are perceived as a threat to others, and who are most visible to the police. Several individual and peer group characteristics can serve as cues that youths are delinquent or that they pose a threat and can increase visibility. The present study uses a survey approach to determine the relative association of these individual and peer group characteristics with the establishment of a police record. The analysis reveals that in addition to delinquent activities, fitting the common image of a delinquent and dangerous person–that is, being a male in a predominantly, male, delinquent peer group–increases a youth's chances of arrest. Moreover, committing a high proportion of offenses with a group of peers, which results in high visibility, also increases the chances of arrest.

Decisions by Juvenile Officers

This paper examines decision making by juvenile officers, looking at the effects that race and socioeconomic status of the individual, and racial composition and socioeconomic status of his neighborhood, have on juvenile police disposition. Data from Washington, D.C., indicate little, if any, influence of any of these factors. An analysis of data from Syracuse, N.Y., using a variation of Blau's structural effects technique, likewise indicate no effect of any kind. It is suggested that the juvenile officer's discretion may be viewed as an example of enacted institutional change.