California's state youth correctional system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), is violent, isolated, and lacks accountability. Fights and riots are a part of daily life and create a culture of fear. DJJ's violent conditions are concealed by an absence of state oversight and the facilities' long distances from youths' families and…

This study investigates the effect of the threat of legal sanctions on intentions to commit three types of offenses with a representative sample of 744 officially adjudicated youth with varying histories of offenses and gang involvement. In a departure from previous research, the authors find small severity effects for property crimes that are not…

This study addresses the link between gang membership and arrest frequency, exploring the Gang x Socioeconomic status interaction on those arrests. Notoriously poor, delinquent, and often well-known to police, America's gang youth should have very high odds of arrest. Yet it is unclear whether mere membership in a gang increases the risk of arrest…

The "2008 Title V Report to Congress" marks a departure from the past. Before 2008, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reported solely on the Community Prevention Grants program in its "Title V Report to Congress." This year, OJJDP is reporting on the four delinquency prevention programs that were…

This article traces the historical coverage of the gender issue in the criminological literature. It also provides contemporary empirical evidence about differences and similarities between girls and boys with respect to juvenile crime and to processing by the juvenile justice system, by analyzing several national juvenile crime data series, all…

Information from the National Survey on Gang Migration and other literature provides a look at the relationship between gang migration and proliferation. "Gang migration" refers to the movement of gang members from one city to another. Whether such movement has played a major role in the proliferation has been the focus of several studies,…

This study recruited 559 youths from detention centers (mean age was 15.4 years; 50.1% of detainees were girls) to investigate pathways that link witnessing community violence in the 12 months before detainment to drug and sexual risk behaviors in the two months preceding detainment. Through the use of audio-computer-assisted technology, data were…

This bulletin provides an overview of the problems that youth gangs pose. It pinpoints the differences between youth gangs and adult criminal organizations and examines the risk factors that lead to youth gang membership. Some promising strategies being used to curb youth gang involvement are reviewed. The proliferation of youth gangs since 1980…

This authoritative, highly readable reference and text is grounded in the latest knowledge on how antisocial and criminal behavior develops in youth and how it can effectively be treated. Contributors describe proven ways to reduce juvenile delinquency by targeting specific risk factors and strengthening young people's personal, family, and…

This report presents findings of a study that explored issues related to juvenile delinquency by examined the most recent data on juvenile arrests and the delinquency cases processed by U.S. juvenile courts. The study compared the characteristics of young offenders arrested in recent years with those arrested in 1980 and analyzed the responses of…

This report fulfills the annual reporting requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 1974 as amended, and describes the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) efforts to carry out the broad mandates of the JJDP Act during fiscal year 1991. The report begins with an explanation of the…

This bibliography is intended to fill the gap of available information on girl-only gangs as a twentieth-century phenomenon of the United States. Although the topic of girl-only gangs has gained national attention and research interest, the paper asserts no girl-only bibliographic tools are available to help locate information on the topic. The…

The increasingly serious nature of juvenile criminal behavior has led to greater efforts to understand the roots, causes, and correlates of juvenile violence and chronic delinquency, as well as develop more effective means of identifying at-risk youth and treating serious and violent juvenile offenders. This book examines the realities and…

This bulletin offers data on recent trends in juvenile violence, juvenile drug offenses, and gang-related juvenile offending, and describes prosecutorial responses to such offenses. Examples of promising prosecutor-led programs combating the illicit use of guns, violence, drugs, and gangs are also provided. These examples provide a range of ideas…

Substantial disagreement exists among professionals in the judiciary and in the public at large as to what the goals of the justice system should be. Some programs and interventions aimed at preventing juvenile violence and delinquency, as well as efforts that rehabilitate young people already in the system, are identified here. The report…