Handbook of Youth and Justice, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2001
The Plenum Series in Crime and Justice Series

When approached by Plenum to put together a volume of social science research on the topic of "youth and justice," I found the interdisciplinary challenge of such a project intriguing. Having spent 2 years as Director of the Law and Social Science Program at the National Science Foundation, I was well aware of the rich diversity of research that could fit within that topic. I also knew that excellent research on youth and justice was coming from different communities of researchers who often were isolated from each other in their respective disciplines as psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, or policy analysts. I saw this project as an opportunity to break down some of this isolation by introducing these researchers-and their work-to each other and to the broader community of social scientists interested in law and justice. There was another gap, or set of gaps, to be bridged as well. The juvenile justice system and the criminal justice system differ in significant ways, and the civil justice system, which is a major venue for issues of youth and justice, is yet another separate world. Few researchers are likely to know the whole picture. For example, a focus on juvenile justice often ignores the extent to which civil justice proceedings shape the lives of young people through divorce, custody, adoption, family preservation policies, and other actions (and vice versa).

I. Law and Social Science Perspectives on Youth and Justice.- 1. Understanding Victimization and Offending: Definitional Issues.- 2. Juvenile Crime Victims in the Justice System.- II. Victimization.- 3. Child Abuse and Neglect.- 4. The Victimization of Children and Youth: A Comprehensive Overview.- 5. Child Pornography.- III. Offending.- 6. Demography and Death by Violence: A Demographic Analysis of US Homicide Offending Trends.- 7. Girls, Violence, and Delinquency: Popular Myths and Persistent Problems.- 8. Alcohol, Youth, and the Justice System: Underage Drinking as Normative Behavior, a Status Offense, and a Risk Factor for Delinquency.- IV. Cross-Cultural Patterns of Delinquency.- 9. Two Worlds of Deviance: Russia and the United States.- 10. Youth Crime in Western Europe: Will the Old World Imitate the New?.- V. Environmental Influences.- 11. Forging Criminals in the Family.- 12. Youth Collectivities and Adolescent Violence.- 13. Community.- 14. Segregation and Youth Criminal Violence: A Review and Agenda.- VI. Behavioral Questions.- 15. The Development of Delinquency: An Interactional Perspective.- 16. Reasoning and Justice.- 17. How Reliable Are Children’s Memories?.- VII. Administration of Justice.- 18. Juvenile Court and Its Systems of Juvenile Justice.- 19. Family Preservation and Reunification: How Effective a Social Policy?.- 20. Children’s Rights.- 21. The Child Custody Standard: What Do Twenty Years of Research Teach Us?.