While only a minority of children who have been abused or neglected engage in delinquent behavior, they are at a significantly higher risk. When youth do become involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, they present unique needs that require collaboration between the numerous systems and people involved in their lives. The…

Research suggests that child maltreatment predicts juvenile violence, but it is uncertain whether the effects of victimization persist into adulthood or differ across gender. Furthermore, we know little about the mechanisms underlying the victim-perpetrator cycle for males and females. Consequently, this study analyzed associations between child…

This study examined the direct effects of beliefs about aggression and nonviolence on physical aggression and their role as protective factors that buffer adolescents from key risk factors in the peer, school, and parenting domains. Multilevel analyses were conducted on data from 5,581 adolescents representing two cohorts from 37 schools in four…

People in the United States, though only five percent of the world's population, consume two-thirds of the world's illegal drugs. People in the United States, though only five percent of the world's population, incarcerate 25 percent of the world's prisoners. It is no coincidence that of the 2.3 million inmates in U.S. prisons, 65 percent--1.5…

A volunteer teacher working with juvenile delinquents in the Cook County (Illinois) Temporary Juvenile Detention Center's notorious Audy Home sees these kids as mirrors of his own teenage boys, deserving of compassionate assistance. Labeling other people's children as feral or superpredators is misguided. So are federal and state…

Drawing from social disorganization theory, this study examined how perceived neighborhood conditions modified associations between parenting and delinquency, depressive symptoms, and school problem behavior among more than 800 African American and Latino 10- to 14-year-olds participating in Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study.…

The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) is a functional assessment used in approximately 27 states to evaluate youth service outcomes. The CANS purports to measure both the youth's risk and protective factors, but its validity is largely un-researched. This study compares ratings of 304 delinquent youth on the CANS and ratings on a…