Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders

One approach to identifying gaps in knowledge about serious and violent juvenile (SVJ) offenders is to focus on "missing information" in the empirical literature. It would be quite easy, in fact, to compile a long list of research questions covering a diverse set of topics. This is an important task that is necessary in recommending future research priorities. However, I propose that future research questions are best viewed through a lens that frames the issues in terms of gaps in our approach to understanding the problem of seriousjuvenile crime. In this chapter, I first attempt to provide this lens by identifying and discussing three key points related to how we think about SVJ offending. I propose that a framework for understanding this problem requires (a) a specific focus on SVJ offenders that incorporates issues of definition, heterogeneity, and co-occurrence with other behavior problems; (b) an understanding of the social ecology of serious juvenile crime in terms of the complex interaction between individual, situational, and contextual influences over time; and (c) an awareness of the relevance of research to services, systems, and policies that must include an appreciation of how research can be informed by the daily lives of people who experience or address problems of serious juvenile crime. The overarching theme of this chapter is that research and practice must be interconnected in a feedback loop that allows each to