Arkansas Legislative Reforms Provide Framework for Change While Supporting Parens Patriae Philosophy of Juvenile Court

Changes in Arkansas's juvenile laws resulting from the school shootings in Jonesboro impacted two separate issues of the juvenile court process. The first law changed aspects of transfer provisions for processing juveniles as adults. Secondly, the law created new provisions allowing blended sentencing for juveniles who commit certain enumerated offenses. Both provisions are examined in this article. The authors examine the impact those changes had on the types and numbers of cases handled by the court and argue that the framework provided by Arkansas's Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction law illustrates a legislative response to juvenile violence that supports the concept of parens patriae and promotes the original purpose for which juvenile courts were created while balancing concerns for public safety.     

DISPUTES INVOLVING YOUTH STREET GANG MEMBERS: MICRO‐SOCIAL CONTEXTS*

This paper examines microsocial contexts of violent and nonviolent dispute‐related incidents involving gang members. Data consist of reports of field observations of twelve black and eight white youth street gangs in Chicago between 1959 and 1962. Dispute‐related incidents (N = 2,637) were classified according to three primary pretexts: normative or order violations, identity attacks and retaliation. Findings show that disputes associated with each of these generally unfolded consistently with expectations based on the extent to which status concerns were likely to be outweighed by such situational constraints as a close relationship between disputants and audience intervention. We suggest that understanding violence in the gang context will be enhanced greatly by further consideration of the microsocial level of explanation and linkages to its macro‐ and individual‐level counterparts.