State laws provide a variety of means to protect children from self-inflicted or parentally-inflicted harm. In recent years, the Supreme Court has imposed stringent procedural requirements on juvenile delinquency laws. In the past year, however, the Court has refused to extend these procedural stringencies to analogous child-protective state laws. This article explores generally the rationale f...

Youth gangs are on the rise. Today they threaten virtually every major city, many small communities, and even rural areas. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is committed to helping communities overcome this problem, and an essential first step is understanding the factors that contribute to the growth of youth gangs and the relationship of gang membership to deli...

Crime and public policy continue to be salient issues in the 21st century. This article reviews juvenile justice policy and examines initiatives that demonstrate positive directions for the future of the juvenile justice system. The authors summarize the history of juvenile justice and review recent developments that warrant further research to demonstrate rational, effective policies and strat...

To investigate the link between attachment to parents and delinquency, and the potential moderating effects of age and sex, 74 published and unpublished manuscripts (N = 55,537 participants) were subjected to a multilevel meta-analysis. A mean small to moderate effect size was found (r = 0.18). Poor attachment to parents was significantly linked to delinquency in boys and girls. Stronger effect...

Although youth who commit serious violent crimes are small in number, they account for a disproportionate amount of juvenile crime. How then can we best intervene with this difficult—even dangerous—population? A major study, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and conducted by its Study Group on Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders, sheds new light on promising...

This paper examines associations between biological father's incarceration and internalizing and externalizing outcomes of depression and serious delinquency, across White, Black, and Hispanic subsamples of youth in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Among respondents whose father was first incarcerated during childhood or adolescence, father's incarceration is found to be as...

Article: Since the turn of the century, juvenile delinquency, which is defined as antisocial or criminal behavior by children or adolescents (Morris, 1980), has been an important area of study. However, never has the study of delinquency been more important than the present, as schools seek promising paradigms for reaching American youth. An essential foundation for the development and evaluati...

Forty years ago an increase in 'juvenile delinquency' led to a large prison-building programme for young offenders. Today, the emphasis is on community sentencing and a reduction in prison places. The secondment of nurses into youth offending teams makes it possible to offer primary health services to a group of mainly male, vulnerable people.