Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is an intensive familyand community-based treatment that addresses the multiple determinants of serious antisocial behavior in juvenile offenders. The multisystemic approach views individuals as being nested within a complex network of interconnected systems that encompass individual, family, and extrafamilial (peer, school, neighborhood) factors. Intervention may be...

Over the past decade researchers have identified intervention strategies and program models that reduce delinquency and promote pro-social development. Preventing delinquency, says Peter Greenwood, not only saves young lives from being wasted, but also prevents the onset of adult criminal careers and thus reduces the burden of crime on its victims and on society. It costs states billions of dol...

Without treatment, the child may continue on a path of delinquency and eventually adult crime. Effective assessments of and comprehensive responses to court-involved juveniles with mental health needs can help break this cycle and produce healthier young people who are less likely to act out and commit crimes. The importance of screening and treatment are also discussed in the Delinquency Preve...

The persistence of aggressive criminal behavior is recurrently observed in offenders despite being previously advised on the negative consequences of their actions. One possible explanation for the continuation of aggressive behaviors could be that they are the consequence of either possible deficits in cognitive flexibility (set-shifting) or in altered feedback processing. Event-related brain ...

Forty years ago an increase in 'juvenile delinquency' led to a large prison-building programme for young offenders. Today, the emphasis is on community sentencing and a reduction in prison places. The secondment of nurses into youth offending teams makes it possible to offer primary health services to a group of mainly male, vulnerable people.

This Bulletin features evaluations of programs that have implemented the MST approach. Of particular interest is the Simpsonville, South Carolina, program, which services serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders at imminent risk of out-of-home placement. The Simpsonville program has significantly reduced recidivism rates at substantial savings in terms of both human and financial consid...

It has been the prevailing view that young offenders are more present oriented than their peers, but this view has little empirical basis other than the actions that have defined these youth as offenders. In the present study, we used a decision task with actual monetary consequences to assess the tendency of young offenders and a control group of high school students to discount the future. Th...

Law enforcement agencies refer approximately two-thirds of all youth arrested to a court with juvenile jurisdiction for further processing. As with law enforcement, the court may decide to divert some juveniles away from the formal justice system to other agencies for service. Prosecutors may file some juvenile cases directly in criminal (adult) court. The net result is that juvenile courts for...

This paper discusses some General issues of organizing and conducting an empirical study juvenile delinquency. Special attention is paid to the methodology research problem related personality career a minor criminal. In particular, authors consider peculiarities using sociological methods find out personal qualities offenders reasons that led their committing offenses crimes.