Juvenile Delinquency provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of all aspects of juvenile delinquency with a sociological focus.

As Simon Dinitz, Ohio State University, says “Clemens Bartollas is genuinely interested in delinquents and in all those who work with and have contact with delinquents. This book reflects Professor Bartollas' abiding intellectual and emotional commitment to understanding and reducing delinquency, as well as ameliorating the personal and social ills that generate the massive delinquency problems not only in the United States but also in nearly all modern industrial nations.”

Every edition is thoroughly updated to reflect current research. Some exciting new updates in this edition:

• A new emphasis on the importance of human agency, or the interpretation and meaning that delinquents themselves bring to their social world¬ - as hot area within juvenile delinquency research.
• Coverage of delinquency across the life course, one of the most promising and exciting perspectives in studying delinquency today, can be found in each chapter.
• Increased focus on race and delinquency, especially in Chapters 7 and 10, allows for an examination of how racial factors affect the definition, handling, and processing of juvenile delinquents.
• An updated Chapter 10, “Gang Delinquency” provides more explanation of female gangs.
• Increased coverage of international juvenile justice in Chapters 14 and 15.

Written from a sociological perspective, this textbook examines four explanations of juvenile delinquency, the environmental influences on delinquent behavior, the efforts of society to prevent juvenile delinquency, and the justice system's effectiveness in correcting juvenile behavior. The seventh edition emphasizes the life course perspective, surveys theories of desistance, and explores the gender differences between girls and boys.
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Key Benefit: Juvenile Delinquency provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of all aspects of juvenile delinquency with a sociological focus. Key Topic: This text examines the explanations of juvenile delinquency, the environmental influences on delinquent behavior, the efforts of society to prevent juvenile delinquency, an evaluation of the justice system's effectiveness in controlling juvenile delinquency, the review of recent legislation and court rulings on the rights of youthful offenders, and the rights of adolescents in general.

Summary, Key Terms, Critical Thinking Questions, Web Destinations and Notes conclude each chapter.

I. THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF DELINQUENCY.

1. Adolescence and Delinquency.

 

How Has the Treatment of Adolescents Changed in the United States?

Are Youth at Risk Today?

How the Juvenile Court Codes Affect the Definitions of Delinquent Behavior

What is Status Offense?

How Juvenile Delinquents Have Been Handled in American Society

The Themes Used to Examine the Study of Delinquency

 

2. The Measurement and Nature of Delinquency.

 

The Contributions Uniform Crime Reports Have Made to Understanding Delinquency

Juvenile Court Statistics

The Contributions of the Cohort Studies

How Self-Report and Official Statistics Compare

The Contributions of Victimization Surveys

The Most Important Social Factors Related to Delinquency

The Dimensions of Delinquent Behavior

Delinquency Through the Life Course

II. THE CAUSES OF DELINQUENCY.

3. Individual Causes of Delinquency.

 

The Contribution of the Classical School to the Understanding Delinquency

The Insights Positivism Offer to Understanding Delinquency

Contemporary Approaches to the Rationality of Crime

 

4. Social Structure Theories.

 

Social Disorganization Theory

How Cultural Deviance Theory is Related to Delinquency

How Strain Affects Delinquent Behavior

The Relationship Between Social Stratification and Delinquency

Structural Explanations of Delinquency Across the Life Course

 

5. Social Process Theories.

 

Differential Association Theory

How Drift Theory Related to Delinquency

The Relationship Between Social Control and Delinquent Behavior

How Integrated Theory Explains Delinquency

Social Process and Delinquency Across the Life Course

 

6. Social Reaction Theories.

 

How Labeling Theory Explains Delinquency

What The Contribution of Symbolic Interactionist Theory to the Understanding of Delinquency

How Conflict Theory Explains Crime and Delinquency

III. ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON DELINQUENTS.

7. Female Delinquency and Gender, Class, and Race.

How is Gender Important in Understanding Delinquency?

Gender Neutral Perspectives on Explanations of Female Delinquency

How Feminist Theories Can be Applied to Understanding Crime

A Feminist Theory on Delinquency

How Gender Bias Affects the Processing of the Female Delinquent

Gender Across the Life Course

The Continuum of Care for Female Juvenile Offenders

 

8. The Family and Delinquency.

 

How Adolescence and Family Problems Affect Delinquency Behavior

The Relationship between the Family and Delinquency

Child Abuse and Neglect

Across the Life Course and Family

How Child Abuse and Neglect Handled by the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice System

 

9. The School and Delinquency.

 

How Education Has Evolved in the United States

What Constitutes Crime in the Schools

Is There a Correlation between Delinquency and School Failure?

Some of the Theoretical Perspectives on School and Delinquency

The Rights of Students

Are There Promising Partnerships Between the School and the Juvenile Justice System?

The Most Promising Intervention Strategies Are in the School Setting

 

10. Gang Delinquency.

 

How Peer Groups and Gangs are Related

How Gangs Have Evolved in the United States

The Nature and Extent of Gang Activity

The Theories of Gang Formation

Gangs Across the Life Course

How Communities Can Prevent and Control Youth Gangs

 

11. Drugs and Delinquency.

 

How Social Attitudes Are Related to Drug Use

The Prevalence and Incidence of Drug Use among Adolescents

The Main Types of Drugs

The Relationship Between Drug Use and Delinquency

Is There a Correlation Between Chronic Offending and Drug Use?

Some of the Theoretical Explanations for the Onset of Drug Use

How Can Drug Use be Prevented and Treated

IV. PREVENTION, DIVERSION, AND TREATMENT.

12. Prevention, Diversion, and Treatment.

 

Delinquency Prevention

How Diversion Works

The Treatment Debate

The Most Frequently Used Treatment Modalities

What Works for Whom and in What Context?

V. SOCIAL CONTROL OF DELINQUENCY

13. An Overview of the Juvenile Justice Process.

 

How the Structures and Functions of the Juvenile Justice System Work

THe Relationship Between Treatment and Punishment in the Juvenile Justice System

How the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 Affected Juvenile Corrections

Do Graduated Sanctions Represent a New Day in Juvenile Justice?

Trends for the Twenty-First Century

 

14. The Police and the Juvenile.

         

The History of Police-Juvenile Relations

Juveniles’ Attitudes toward the Police

How Juvenile Offenders are Processed

International Juvenile Justice and the Police

The Legal Rights of Juveniles

How the Prevention and Deterrence of Youth Offenders Takes Place

What Do the Police Contribute to the Prevention and Deterrence of Juvenile Delinquency?

 

15. The Juvenile Court.

 

How the Juvenile Court Originated

How the Norms of the Juvenile Court Have Changed

The Role Expectations of Juvenile Court Actors

The Pretrial Procedures

Juvenile Justice and the International Context

What Happens During a Juvenile Trial

The Juvenile Sentencing Structures

Reduced Use of the Death Penalty for Juveniles

 

16. Juvenile Corrections: Probation, Community Treatment and Institutionalization

 

Development of Community-Based and Institutional Corrections

Probation

The Role Residential and Day Treatment Programs Play

The Types of Institutional Placement for Juveniles

The Quality of Residential Life in a Training School

The Rights of Confined Juveniles

How Aftercare Works

Evaluation of Juvenile Corrections