Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer this question by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The contributors offer perspectives on antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants. Each essay explores the practical implication of the authors' theoretical work for crime prevention and control.

Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer this question by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The contributors offer perspectives on antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants. Each essay explores the practical implication of the authors' theoretical work for crime prevention and control.

This field study features intensive personal interviews of more than four hundred young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive there, their victimization and involvement in crime, their associations with other street youth, especially within "street families," their contacts with the police, and their efforts to rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised in the context of a new social capital theory of crime.

This book addresses how and why criminal offenders repeat their actions after being released from prison. It is part of an attempt to explain criminal behavior within the context of a contemporary psychological understanding of behavior, rather than more traditional theories of crime. Over 300 male criminal "repeat offenders" were interviewed and tested. The results indicate that their new offenses may be the result of something like a "breakdown." This report, written for a general audience, has important implications for release supervision, rehabilitation programs, and the prediction of...

The contributors to this book believe that something can be done to make life in American cities safer, to make growing up in urban ghettos less risky, and to reduce the violence that so often afflicts urban childhood. They consider why there is so much violence, why some people become violent and others do not, and why violence is more prevalent in some areas. The authors also discuss how the urban environment affects childhood development. They review a variety of intervention strategies and consider when it is appropriate to use them and towards whom they should be targeted.

Between 1965 and 1990, federal judges in almost all of the states handed down sweeping rulings that affected virtually every prison and jail in the United States. Without a doubt judges were the most important prison reformers during this period. This book provides an account of this process, and uses it to explore the more general issue of the role of courts in the modern bureaucratic state. It provides detailed accounts of how the courts formulated and sought to implement their orders, and how this action affected the traditional conception of federalism, separation of powers, and the rule...

Recriminalizing Delinquency presents a case study of legislation that redefines previous acts of delinquency as crimes, and delinquents as juvenile offenders. It examines one state's response to violent juvenile crime through waiver legislation that transfers jurisdiction over juveniles from juvenile court to criminal court. It focuses on the creation, implementation, and effects of waiver legislation that lowered the eligible age of criminal responsibility to thirteen for murder and fourteen for other violent offenses.

This field study features intensive personal interviews of more than four hundred young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive there, their victimization and involvement in crime, their associations with other street youth, especially within "street families," their contacts with the police, and their efforts to rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised in the context of a new social capital theory of crime.