Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural & Legal Perspectives

by Dickson D. Bruce Jr., Gilbert Geis, Arnold Binder

This book of original essays presents students with challenging looks at some of the most basic, and sometimes most difficult, decisions faced by criminal justice researchers. Each chapter presents an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583605037
• ISBN13: 9781583605035
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 520 Pages

Customer Reviews

not book school requested

My teacher said we didn't have to buy the book recommended, but it would help. I saw thisbook, which was MUCH cheaper than one school uses. My teacher liked this one better than theirs! Much more information .

Good reference book

Juvenile Delinquency is a power packed book filled with a wealth of information and statistics dealing with juveniles and their deviant behavior. Arnold Binder, Dickson Bruce and Gilbert Geis touch on some very perplexing issues and attempt to present the facts for all to scrutinize. Does race play a major role in determining a predisposition toward criminality? Is socioeconomic status a primary factor in identifying those destined to commit crimes? These and many more issues are discussed at length in a detailed look at juvenile deviance. With the ever increasing efforts to combat crime and pinpoint its root causes, more scholars and criminal justice professionals are looking for answers to the simple and yet complex question of why people commit crimes. This publication does an exceptional job at presenting a multitude of possible reasons for criminal behavior and contributes some startling statistics to back them up. Binder also addresses some of the popular but spurious correlations the media too often promotes as being fact. For the corrections professional, this book is a great addition to their repertoire of reference material. It provides added insight into many motivating factors behind juvenile deviance and does so by presenting the information and allowing the reader to form his or her own opinion. Binder points out the three principal methods used in collecting data on juvenile deviance and they include the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and self-report studies. Binder discusses at length these three methods and details both the highlights and hazards of relying strictly on one method over the other. As an example: ...UCR data indicate females run away more than males, but that males violate curfew laws more than two to one over females. Self-report results, on the other hand, show no greater tendency on the part of females to run away. There is thought that the difference between UCR and self-report results stems from a greater tendency for the police to arrest runaway females. Binder also discuss at length the myriad of theories postulated by the numerous criminal justice professionals and points out that theories abound and are as numerous as those promoting them. Binder cautions that the use of any one theory in an attempt to put all into one neat little box should be viewed with a skeptical eye. From a historical prospective, Juvenile Delinquency provides an excellent examination of how we as a society have dealt with juvenile crime beginning with the ancient world. This is of significance in understanding how a separate system of justice developed specifically designed to handle youthful offenders. The New York house of refuge is an example of early attempts to "...save juvenile delinquents from the influences that all too easily led to crime." In the early stages, young people who were convicted of crimes or vagrancy were accepted into these faci