Are Teen Courts An Answer to Our Juvenile Delinquency Problems?

Teen courts are being implemented across the country at a speed that surpasses the celerity with which research of program effectiveness can be performed. This study attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the Dona Ana County, New Mexico, Teen Court by looking at the rate of recidivism for, program participants as well as possible influential factors upon the rate of recidivism. The subjects were 478 randomly selected participants who were traced though the Juvenile Probation and Parole Office to detect any referrals following teen court participation. The study found a recidivism rate of 25% between 1994 and 1998, which was affected by several factors, including gender, age, prior offenses, and program completion. The study was not a comprehensive evaluation, but it did reinforce the need for further research in the area.     

Detention Decision-Making in a Predominantly Hispanic Region: Rural and Non-Rural Differences

This study examines the implementation of juvenile detention policy by comparing decision making in two jurisdictions where Hispanics represent the numerical majority of the population. One jurisdiction is rural and the other is a jurisdiction with over 1000,000 population. Interviews with juvenile justice probation and parole officers and judges are combined with a quantitative analysis of official records from 1994. Detention decision making is different in these jurisdictions. There is more formal processing and detention of juveniles in the rural jurisdiction. This is attributable to a perception of the community as heterogeneous rather than homogeneous, and a lack of alternatives as compared to the non-rural jurisdiction.     

TRENDS IN THE GENDER GAP IN VIOLENT OFFENDING: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY*

Recent research has compared male and female trends in violent offending in Uniform Crime Report (UCR) arrest data with similar trends derived from victims' reports in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and has concluded that the two data sources produce contrary findings. In this article, we reassess this issue and draw different conclusions. Using pooled National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS data for 1973 to 2005, we find that the female‐to‐male offending rate ratios for aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault have increased over time and that the narrowing of the gender gaps is very similar to patterns in UCR arrest data. In addition, we find that these patterns are in part caused by larger decreases in male than female offending after the mid‐1990s and not by recent increases in violent offending rates among females. We conclude that changes in the gender gaps in aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault are real and not artifacts; therefore, these changes deserve serious attention in future research. We conclude with a discussion of several hypotheses that might account for a narrowing of the gender gap in nonlethal violent offending over time.     

TOWARD A MACRO-SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF GENERAL DETERRENCE

This paper is focused on the problem of general deterrence as a macro-sociological phenomenon. An attempt has been made to integrate existing literature into a set of testable hypotheses Three perspectives on general deterrence are examined, including the classical school of criminology and the positions of Durkheim and Sumner. The variables of certainty and seventy, type of threatened behavior, latent deterrent functions of legal threats, and normative structure are discussed. It is suggested that compliance rates may be used as an empirical index of general deterrence.