The Adolescent Criminal

The Adolescent Criminal examines the most important issues, components, and trends concerning adolescent misconduct from the vantage point of the end of the 1980s, and concerns itself with what to look for in the future. Despite indications that juvenile delinquency is decreasing, a closer look at the picture gives much cause for concern. Adolescent crime has become increasingly more sophisticated, violent and heterogeneous, and its participants younger. Gang violence has spread out from urban centers into suburbia, and gang members have become more organized in their activities. Juvenile prostitution has shown little sign of abating despite the presence of AIDS. Drug and alcohol use among adolescents has reached epidemic proportions, as have running away from home and pettier acts of delinquency. This study of juvenile delinquency is primarily concerned with the adolescent years of youth where delinquency behavior is most pronounced, taking a multicontextual, multidisciplinary approach to exploring the adolescent criminal. The advantage in this is that it takes into consideration the contributions, strengths and weaknesses of the various schools of thought with respect to the delinquency of adolescents-sociological, psychological, biological, familial, demographical, legal, and international, and their implications for the future-in order to present the student with a greater overall perspective and knowledge of the dynamics of adolescent crime today.