BACKGROUND Few studies indicate that most behavioral problems are due to family dysfunction and inappropriate family environment. It seems that the family of the delinquent adolescent is unbalanced in the power structure and parenting style. OBJECTIVES The present study compares the family power structure and parent-child relationship quality in delinquent and non-delinquent young subjects in...

Despite the uniqueness of an incarceration experience for adolescents, there remains a shortage of research on adolescents and emerging adults who have been recently released from detention centers and are returning home during the transitional time period of "reentry". Drawing from the developmental literature, the current study uses a diverse (54% Black, 20% White, 26% Other Race) longitudina...

Public school vandalism was investigated with a sample of students in 7th through 12th grade. Vandalism was found to be the highest in Grade 7 and decreased progressively with each increase in grade level. Being from classes in the lowest academic track was the strongest predictor of school vandalism. For high school students, having committed acts of vandalism during their junior high year was...

Needles for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.

Both law and society scholars and developmental psychologists have focused on the legitimacy of authority figures, although in different domains (police versus parents). The purpose of the current research is to bridge these two fields by examining the relations among parenting style (i.e., authoritarian, authoritative, permissive), the perception of parental legitimacy, and changes in delinque...

is a modern counterpart. The problem of Ulysses is the problem of the many thousands of Displaced Persons in Europe to-day, of the returned Prisoner of War, and, to a lesser but still very significant degree, of every ex-Serviceman and woman after release. It is difficult to estimate the exact size of this problem. The psychiatrist may only see the grossly maladjusted few, though he will see th...

The relation between timing of first sex and later delinquency was examined using a genetically informed sample of 534 same-sex twin pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, who were assessed at three time points over a 7-year interval. Genetic and environmental differences between families were found to account for the association between earlier age at first sex and in...

The relationship of appearance to family and peer relationships was investigated in a sample of delinquent adolescent boys and a matched sample of nondelinquents, controlling for age, IQ, socioeconomic status, and family risk factors. As predicted, the effects of appearance on family relationships varied with the boys’ delinquency status, with more baby faced or more attractive delinquents expe...