Minor Delinquency Research Articles

Juvenile conference committees: An evaluation of the administration of justice at the neighborhood level

The Juvenile/Family Court has significant problems in dealing efficiently and effectively with its caseload. Due to the pressure of “serious” juvenile crime, a large volume of status offense and minor crime cases, although of significant social consequence, are dismissed by the court. The concept of “neighborhood justice” has provided one basis for dealing with such cases. This is a report of a process evaluation of New Jersey's Juvenile Conference Committee (JCC) program, which provides an extensive network of citizen tribunals as an arm of the court. The evaluation was designed to explore both structural and procedural aspects of the JCC with a focus on policy implications. Results show that the JCC is a major diversion mechanism. Questions are raised, however, as to the purpose of intervention in cases of minor delinquency and the adequacy of current JCC procedures in dealing with such cases. The conclusion is reached that the citizens' tribunal is an important mechanism for community development.

Discrimination or Sex Differences? Criteria for Evaluating the Juvenile Justice System's Handling of Minor Offenses

The overrepresentation of female minor offenders in the juvenile justice system and the more severe handling of them than of males committing the same type of offense have come under attack as evidence of discriminatory practices. Defenders of the system claim that official statistics reflect de facto differences in the delinquent behavior of boys and girls and that differences in treatment correspond to the different needs of each gender group. A review of recent research invalidates such justifications by showing that (1) there is no evidence of gender specialization in behavior classified as minor offenses, and (2) the causal factors explaining involvement in minor delinquency are much the same for boys and girls. Furthermore, school attachment, at the peak age of involvement in minor delinquency (15-16), appears to function equally for males and females as a stronger restraint than family attachments. It is concluded that schools should play a much more central role in prevention programs for both groups.

A Synergistic Model for a Juvenile Court Administered Alternative Education Program

Abstract The Alternative Education program coordinated by the Snyder-Union County (Pennsylvania) Juvenile Probation Department provides tutorial instruction to secondary school students who have been referred through the Juvenile Court for minor delinquency and/or truancy. Alternative Education classrooms are located on the campuses of two local universities where undergraduate students serve as tutors. Six school districts have been receiving services from the program since 1981. Originally funded by grants from the Pennsylvania Juvenile Court Judges' Commission and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the program is now self-sufficient through per diems paid by the school districts. A unique aspect of the program is the close relationship between the Juvenile Court and the universities, from which each derives benefits. The school districts have also benefitted in that they now have a viable option for chronic truants, disruptive students and potential dropouts. A reduction in local dro...

School context, gender, and delinquency

This study compares two high schools serving the same community and compares student bodies with similar background characteristics. The purpose is to examine how control/strain variables predict delinquency in two distinct school contexts. It was found that minor delinquency occurred more often in the environment dominated by competitive academic achievement, routine handling of discipline, and unpredictable supervision. Examination of the model paths suggest that this environment is also conservative and unlikely to offer legitimate opportunities to girls with gender-egalitarian orientation. The school context characterized by a broader definition of success, more specialized discipline, and predictable supervision promotes stronger bonds with its students and lower levels of delinquency for both genders.

WORK AND DELINQUENCY AMONG JUVENILES ATTENDING SCHOOL

Abstract Prior studies have found no relationship or a slight positive relationship between work and delinquency among juveniles attending school. Such studies, however, have simply compared employed to unemployed juveniles. This study predicts that certain types of jobs will reduce delinquency and focuses on the relationship between delinquency and five job characteristics: prestige, pay, satisfaction, hours, and length of employment. Data indicate that serious delinquency is positively associated with hours and negatively associated with prestige, while minor delinquency is positively associated with hours and pay, and negatively associated with prestige and length of employment. Juveniles in white-collar jobs of long duration, short hours, and low pay have lower rates of delinquency than juveniles who never worked.

The Relationship between Sensation Seeking and Delinquency: A Longitudinal Analysis

A sample of 584 male and female adolescents were studied at two points in time to determine the relationship between self-reported delinquency and sensation seeking. Analyses of variance and covariance were used to test the effect of delinquency status and frequency of minor delinquent activity on sensation seeking at Time 1 and on changes in sensation seeking from Time 1 to Time 2. The results indicated that delinquency and sensation seeking are related in adolescence regardless of sex; those adolescents who are delinquent score significantly higher on the Disinhibition scale. This finding was not obtained for experience seeking. One implication of the findings is that rates of minor delinquency could be lowered by providing high sensation seekers with socially approved opportunities for meeting their sensation-seeking needs.

Television and Delinquency

Television and Delinquency

Children and Divorce

Children and adolescents experience severe stresses during the process of parental divorce. As a consequence, the pediatrician can expect to be called upon frequently to provide information and counsel to the divorcing parents, to the children, or to other family members directly, as well as to the physicians in other branches of medicine and concerned members of related disciplines whose professional work brings them into significant contact with these troubled families. INCIDENCE The number of children and adolescents who are caught in the process of marital dissolution has soared to more than 1 million new children each year since 1972. It has been estimated that between 32% and 46% of all children who grow up in the 1970s will experience either the separation or divorce of their parents. Although research about the effects of divorce on children and adolescents is limited, some of the findings are worrisome. Our five-year study of the effects of divorce on a group of 131 California children and adolescents found a significant number at risk during the postdivorce years. Five years after the marital separation, 37% of these youngsters, who were drawn from a normal population, were considered to be suffering with various manifestations of moderate to severe depression, including learning below capacity in school, difficulties with peers, sexual acting out, minor delinquency, explosive anger, continued preoccupation with the divorce, and a general pervasive neediness.

A Foreigner's View of American Diversion

As part of a Dutch-sponsored project to learn about the American ex perience with diversion, five diversion projects in California are described and evaluated: university-sponsored counseling of status offenders inside a police department; police-sponsored counseling and job seeking for sta tus offenders and minor delinquents outside the police department; a "barrio organization" for all types of young offenders, with counselors acting without links to the police as advocates and community workers; a police program of supervision and controlled activities for cooperative de linquents ; and a probation program inside a juvenile hall for counseling detained status offenders. With exception of the barrio organization, all projects proved disappointing. There was little actual diversion; instead, the projects were largely an extension of the justice system. They did not deal with delinquent youths from the lower class and they appeared to function as a "velvet cloak" for the hardening of judicial policy in other respects. Project workers do not participate because they believe in di verting, but because they believe in counseling. Therefore, they are not aware of the antidiversion aspects of the projects.

Children and Divorce

Children and adolescents experience severe stresses during the process of parental divorce. As a consequence, the pediatrician can expect to be called upon frequently to provide information and counsel to the divorcing parents, to the children, or to other family members directly, as well as to the physicians in other branches of medicine and concerned members of related disciplines whose professional work brings them into significant contact with these troubled families.INCIDENCEThe number of children and adolescents who are caught in the process of marital dissolution has soared to more than 1 million new children each year since 1972. It has been estimated that between 32% and 46% of all children who grow up in the 1970s will experience either the separation or divorce of their parents.Although research about the effects of divorce on children and adolescents is limited, some of the findings are worrisome. Our five-year study of the effects of divorce on a group of 131 California children and adolescents found a significant number at risk during the postdivorce years. Five years after the marital separation, 37% of these youngsters, who were drawn from a normal population, were considered to be suffering with various manifestations of moderate to severe depression, including learning below capacity in school, difficulties with peers, sexual acting out, minor delinquency, explosive anger, continued preoccupation with the divorce, and a general pervasive neediness.

Homophily, Selection, and Socialization in Adolescent Friendships

Longitudinal sociometric data on adolescent friendship pairs, friends-to-be, and former friends are examined to assess levels of homophily on four attributes (frequency of current marijuana, use, level of educational aspirations, political orientation, and participation in minor delinquency) at various stages of friendship formation and dissolution. In addition, estimates are developed of the extent to which observed homophily in friendship dyads results from a process of selection (assortative pairing), in which similarity precedes association and the extent to which it results from a process of socialization in which association leads to similarity. The implications of the results for interpreting estimates of peer influence derived from cross-sectional data are discussed.

Antecedents of adolescent initiation into stages of drug use: A developmental analysis

The social psychological antecedents of entry into three sequential stages of adolescent drug use, hard liquor, marihuana, and other illicit drugs, are examined in a cohort of high school students in which the population at risk for initiation into each stage could be clearly specified. The analyses are based on a two-wave panel sample of New York State public secondary students and subsamples of matched adolescent-parent and adolescent-best schoolfriend dyads. Each of four clusters of predictor variables, parental influences, peer influences, adolescent involvement in various behaviors, and adolescent beliefs and values, and single predictors within each cluster assume differential importance for each stage of drug behavior. Prior involvement in a variety of activities, such as minor delinquency and use of cigarettes, beer, and wine are most important for hard liquor use. Adolescents' beliefs and values favorable to the use of marihuana and association with marihuana-using peers are the strongest predictors of initiation into marihuana. Poor relations with parents, feelings of depression, and exposure to drug-using peers are most important for initiation into illicit drugs other than marihuana.

Diversion: The Promise and the Danger

Diversion is inherent in the juvenile justice system and necessary to keep it from collapsing. It is defined as "the channeling of cases to noncourt institutions, in instances where these cases would ordinarily have received an adjudicatory (or fact finding) hearing by a court." It should be distinguished from preventive efforts which contain no possibility that the juvenile's behavior would result in a court hearing. A good test of diversion, therefore, is whether the number of juvenile court adjudications is reduced as a result of a new program. Four diversion projects are described, and their common characteris tics are noted-the use of paraprofessionals from the community, a reliance on crisis intervention, the central role of arbitrators and administrators rather than judges, the trend to avoid stigma, a concen tration on status offenses and minor delinquency, and a lack of evaluation. A proposed balance sheet set forth to weigh the value of diversion discusses the clients of these programs and their treatment, fairness and the power of the state, the available resources, and evaluations .of these programs. Diversion projects are dangerous to the extent that they may destroy the necessary balance between social welfare and due process. The court still has an important role to play by reviewing cases for abuse of discretion, by creating special masters as ombudsmen to determine what is happen ing in the system, and by increasing the research capabilities available to the judicial branch. Finally, the article notes that diversion may be only a halfway measure which takes the pressure off the system to eliminate status offenses and, instead, creates an equally coercive social control system with less visibility and accountability.

The Touchstone of Juvenile Deliquency

I once gave a talk to sixth-form boys in a Catholic public school about delinquency, and at the end of it one of my audience remarked: ‘with all due respect, sir, I think you have been talking nonsense. I think that human beings are responsible and if they do wrong they should be punished, unless they are mentally defective’. That is a perfectly reasonable and refreshing statement concerning the freedom of the will and the essential simplicity of human action. At the other extreme we find the elaborate analyses of human motivation made by sociologists and psychologists, which appear to deny all freedom of choice and responsibility.The subject of delinquency is indeed nowadays a touchstone for everybody’s opinion—expert or not, and the trouble is that they are all in the right—in varying degrees. Every general statement needs qualification and particular application, but so often we get nothing but the general statement dogmatically pronounced.For example we are told that the main causes for the alleged increase in juvenile delinquency are to be traced to the lack of religion, with the consequent decline in the stability of family life and in respect for authority. But, for argument’s sake, a State could be imagined where there was no family life or religion, as we conceive it, but in which the social sanctions against theft were so stringent that delinquency of this type would be practically eliminated. We have no proof that in die Middle Ages or in Victorian England, there was less minor delinquency such as pilfering, than we get now. We have only exact figures for the past half century or so—a period which has seen two very major wars—themselves both a symptom of man’s fallen nature, and the causes of further depravity and lawlessness in Society.

Relative values of point-scale and year-scale measurements of one thousand minor delinquents.

Presents empirical evidence to argue for the standardization and restandardization of the Binet-Simon scale, especially for use in the mental examination of adolescent delinquents. Results of the current authors' studies are discussed in detail and nine points are made in the conclusions section of the article to bolster the argument that the Binet-Simon tests are not accurate in setting apart the feeble-minded among adolescent delinquents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)