Juvenile delinquency

Delinquency is a major social and public health problem for families, young people themselves, and law enforcement agencies, and it is a threat to public safety. Juveniles often present with multiple issues during arrest, such as mental illness, substance abuse, low socio-economic status, family dysfunction, academic problems, and poor peer relationships. One of these justice-involved youths more prevalent mental health issues is conduct disorders (CD). Research has shown that 50%-90% of justice-involved youth are diagnosed with CD. Growing research supports the integration of spirituality into professional social work practice. This study aims to bring awareness that spirituality is essential to these justice-involved youths’ lives through the lived experiences of Direct Service Providers. This study aimed to understand better programming designed to meet the spiritual needs of juveniles with CD who were in juvenile residential treatment programs. This study examined the following questions: RQ1: How do DSPs describe the current spirituality programming offered to juveniles diagnosed with Conduct Disorder (CD) who are in a juvenile residential treatment facility? RQ2: What recommendations do DSPs have for enhancing programming to better meet juveniles’ spiritual needs?
A cross-sectional qualitative research study utilized a thematic analysis to explore DSP’s perceptions of the role of spirituality in the lives of juveniles diagnosed with CD and impacted by juvenile justice services. This study’s results showed spirituality was critical and impactful to the lives of justice-involved youth. It also demonstrated the usefulness of Fisher’s four-domain model in assessing spirituality in justice-involved youth. This study concluded six primary themes from the analysis. The researcher deductively coded the first two themes to explore the research questions in this manuscript. The last four themes resulted from inductive coding of the interviews: (a) programming and resources available to youth (RQ1); (b) recommendations for enhancing spirituality programming and resources for youth (RQ2); (c) viewing spirituality as religion; (d) support for religion and spirituality for youth; (e) facilitators to youths’ spiritual development; and (f) barriers to youths’ spiritual development.

The purpose of this randomized experimental design was to determine the impact of a culturally adapted family-based intervention program on parenting styles. A secondary purpose was to determine the impact of cultural factors, biculturalism and familism, on the parenting styles of parents who participated in the family intervention, as compared to those who did not participate in the intervention. The sample consisted mostly of Haitian parents whose youth, ages 13-17, were involved in the juvenile justice system in South Florida. Twenty-one parents were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n = 15) and comparison group, or standard of care (n = 6). This study was a substudy of a larger scale study that was conducted at a major university in South Florida.
Participants in the family-based intervention group received an evidence-based intervention that was adapted to their cultural needs and language preferences. The intervention lasted between 3-4 months. Participants in the comparison group were those in the standard of care, or treatment as usual group, who were referred to community-based organizations for counseling services. A pretest-posttest design was used to examine the effects of the culturally adapted intervention on parenting styles and familism. Parenting styles were measured using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ, Robinson et al., 1995) and familism was measured using the Attitudinal Familism Scale (Lugo Steidel & Contreras, 2003). T-test analyses were used to determine statistical significance of the variables and gain scores were calculated for the intervention group and comparison group. Pearson’s r correlation coefficient was also used to explore any significant relationships between the dependent variables, parenting styles and familism, and parenting styles and biculturalism. Biculturalism was measured using the Bicultural Involvement Questionnaire (Szapocznik et al., 1980).

A two-group predictive discriminant analysis was used to develop a model to predict youth gang activity among students in an urban school district in south central United States. The predictors were selected from age, race, gender, grade repeats, reading comprehension achievement test scores, and changes in school and school district (uprootedness). Data were obtained from elementary school records of 285 grade nine students (151 male and 134 female) in two junior high schools. Ethnic minorities comprised 75.4% of the sample. Gang involvement data were provided by the school district security department. Data were analyzed using SPSS-X and a FORTRAN computer program by Morris and Meshbane (1995). All possible subsets of predictor variables were examined using leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy estimates. Although no models classified both gang and nongang students with greater accuracy than proportional chance expectations, a model consisting of gender, grade repeats, and school and school district changes (uprootedness) yielded significant classification accuracy for gang students, (z = 12.07, p <.05).

The problem: The purpose of this study was to identify factors
serving as deterrents to juvenile crime as perceived by
juveniles. An emphasis was placed on the identification
of factors which youth perce ive as:
1) having prevented non-delinquent adolescents
from breaking the law;
2) deterrents which may have prevented delinquent
adolescents from breaking the law.
Questions to be answered and explored in this study
were:
1) How do police and judicial efforts affect juvenile
crime?
2) What can the school do in the area of prevention
of crime? 3) What effect, if any, do the family and/or significant
others have in deterring juvenile crime?
4) How do free time and/or planned activities influence
juveniles in crime involvement or non-involvement? Conclusions and Recommendations: There are three major consequences recommended by the
findings of the juveniles' own stated opinions:
l) monetary compensation to be rendered either by
parents or through parental channels.
2) exposure, or some type of resultant publicity
for juveniles found guilty of crimes.
3) reparation through a program of supervised work.
Related recommendations include:
l) Any act of violence or vandalism should be dealt
with according to previously stated policy so that each
member of the school community may abide by the policy with
previous knowledge of consequences.
2) Whatever policy is promulgated, and however it is
administered, it must be consistently and uniformly applied.

The purpose of this non-experimental correlational study was to determine the relationship between the type of attendance policies in the high schools of the 67 Florida school districts, the size of the school district (number of high school students), the socioeconomic status (SES) of the school district, and the average daily attendance rate of the district. Additionally, the study determined if the relationship between policy type and attendance rate was moderated by SES and size. To test the research questions, high school attendance polices were examined and coded into one of three pre-determined categories: punitive, reward, or affective. The SES level and district size were also examined. A percentage was calculated for each district with respect to the makeup of attendance policies (by type). Polices that were punitive in nature were found to be most commonly implemented (mean 81.14 percent).

During a period of increased independence from parents, youth turn to peers for support, and consequently become more vulnerable to peer pressure (Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986). During middle adolescence, vulnerability to peer influence begins to decline (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007). Empirical research has documented this trend in vulnerability to peer pressure across adolescence, but less attention has been afforded to the age-related changes in similarity. To address this, age-related changes in peer similarity in delinquency across the adolescent years were examinded using intraclass correlations. Moderating variables, including gender, reciprocity, and closeness, and control variables, including friendship stability and romantic partner status, were examined. Results indicated an increase in friend similarity in delinquency from 5th to 7th grade and a decrease in similarity from 7th to 9th grade. Implications of this study are discussed in terms of contribution to the field and implementation of the findings.