Readings in Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice

A unique set of readings that include classic, contemporary, and original articles, Readings in Delinquency and Juvenile Justice is a comprehensive book that investigates a variety of topics related to delinquency in an easily-understood, lively fashion. This collection includes classic and contemporary articles as well as some written specifically for this book. This reader contains balanced, comprehensive chapters on peers, family, female delinquency, the media, and delinquency and schools. For employees in the juvenile justice system, sociologists, criminologists, and those involved with youth counseling.

We are extremely excited about having written this book and we hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we did in developing it. The study of juvenile delinquency is one of the most invigorating areas within sociology. All of us can remember times when we were younger and some of the things we did but really didn't know exactly why we did them. One of the many things that you will learn as you read and study this book is how to place your prior behavior in sociological context. In other words, you will learn about social, cultural, and environmental factors that influence our behavior in one fashion or another. Our experience with previous readers similar to this one is that they often are not exciting and fail to stimulate interesting discussions. We have put together a set of readings that are both exciting and challenging. InReadings in Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justicewe assembled amides that we believe cover broadly some of the most important aspects of the subject under discussion. An introduction to each chapter is presented because it is our belief that students prefer having an overview of what is to follow prior to their reading of the article. These introductory comments provide a thumb nail view of the main focus of the article. This collection includes classic and contemporary articles, as well as articles written specifically for this reader. In all cases we have included the entire article so that you, the reader, can see exactly what was studied, why it was studied, and what the findings mean. We have included such classic pieces as Anthony Platt's "The Rise of the Child-Saving Movement" and Travis Hirschi's "Attachment to Parents." The contemporary articles include such pieces as Whitbeck et al's "Families of Homeless and Runaway Adolescents: A Comparison of Parent/Caretaker and Adolescent Perspective on Parenting, Family Violence and Adolescent Conduct" and Thompson et al's "Representing Gangs in the News: Media Constructions of Criminal Gangs." Finally, we have included pieces that were written specifically for this reader and do not appear anywhere else in print such as Connie Freng's "Chicago Women's Contribution to Delinquency" and Trina Hope's "Do Families Matter?: The Relative Effects of Family Characteristics, Self-Control, and Delinquency on Gang Membership." By including classical, contemporary, and original works we hope that the study of delinquency will be both exciting and challenging to a wide range of undergraduate and graduate students. The articles we selected use a variety of theoretical perspectives. We believe the study of delinquency, due to its complexity, defies the use of one single theoretical frame but encompasses multiple explanations. In this vein it is also important to recognize that we have not devoted individual sections to specific theories as is done in other anthologies on this subject. Rather, we included articles that provide students with different theoretical frameworks. This approach gives the instructor the opportunity to expand on the theoretical perspectives included in the article as well as the opportunity to offer alternative explanations. This integrated approach is exciting and will provide for lively classroom discussion. Our sincere appreciation goes to our colleagues whose works Appear in this anthology but particularly to those who contributed original manuscripts. There is an abundance of materials that could have been included but we chose these because we felt they best represent the diversity and complexity of issues surrounding the study of delinquency and juvenile justice. Finally we would like to thank Addrain Conyers for locating some of the articles included here and his meticulous attention to the nuts and bolts associated with publishing a reader. A special thank you also goes to John Boulahanis who assisted with the introductions to each chapter. Lastly, this project could not have been completed wi