NCJ Number
167319
Date Published
1997
Length
221 pages
Annotation
The issues debated in this book are whether juvenile crime and violence are increasing, what causes juvenile crime and violence, the factors that contribute to gang-related juvenile crime, and how juvenile crime can be countered.
Abstract
In considering whether juvenile crime and violence are increasing, two papers examine the reliability and implications of relevant statistics and come to opposite conclusions; one author contends that juvenile crime and violence are increasing, and the other argues that they are not increasing. Two other papers pertinent to the prevalence of juvenile crime and violence focus on the seriousness of juvenile violence in schools, with one paper arguing that violence is serious as a daily problem in schools and the other maintaining that it is a relatively rare event. Another paper in this section supports the contention that juveniles are unfairly blamed for increasing crime and violence, and the concluding paper in this section holds that juveniles are becoming more ruthless in their crimes. Nine papers debate issues pertinent to what causes juvenile crime and violence, including the impact of television violence, single-parent families, biological factors, environmental factors, guns, inner-city culture, and the lack of moral guidance. Five papers focus on the factors that contribute to gang-related juvenile crime: racism, poverty, a desire for excitement and status, lack of discipline, and fear of leaving a gang. Six papers on how juvenile crime can be combated focus on police effectiveness, whether juveniles should be tried as adults, and whether curfews are effective and constitutional. For individual papers, see NCJ-167320-38. Subject indexes and a 51-item bibliography