This chapter suggests that delinquency conceals two distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of one sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating m a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive. There are marked individual differences in the stability of antisocial behavior. The chapter reviews the mysterious relationship between age and antisocial behavior. Some youths who refrain from antisocial behavior may, for some reason, not sense the maturity gap and therefore lack the hypothesized motivation for experimenting with crime.

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Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.

The authors suggest that the most promising route to effective strategies for the prevention of adolescent alcohol and other drug problems is through a risk-focused approach. This approach requires the identification of risk factors for drug abuse, identification of methods by which risk factors have been effectively addressed, and application of these methods to appropriate high-risk and general population samples in controlled studies. The authors review risk and protective factors for drug abuse, assess a number of approaches for drug abuse prevention potential with high-risk groups, and make recommendations for research and practice.

/pdf/risk-and-protective-factors-for-alcohol-and-other-drug-ubehfds1zo.pdf

Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention.

▪ Abstract Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences. Several ways of measuring SES have been proposed, but most include some quantification of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Research shows that SES is associated with a wide array of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood. A variety of mechanisms linking SES to child well-being have been proposed, with most involving differences in access to material and social resources or reactions to stress-inducing conditions by both the children themselves and their parents. For children, SES impacts well-being at multiple levels, including both family and neighborhood. Its effects are moderated by children's own characteristics, family characteristics, and external support systems.

Socioeconomic status and child development.

The first purpose of this review was to assess the impact of implementation on program outcomes, and the second purpose was to identify factors affecting the implementation process. Results from over quantitative 500 studies offered strong empirical support to the conclusion that the level of implementation affects the outcomes obtained in promotion and prevention programs. Findings from 81 additional reports indicate there are at least 23 contextual factors that influence implementation. The implementation process is affected by variables related to communities, providers and innovations, and aspects of the prevention delivery system (i.e., organizational functioning) and the prevention support system (i.e., training and technical assistance). The collection of implementation data is an essential feature of program evaluations, and more information is needed on which and how various factors influence implementation in different community settings.

/pdf/implementation-matters-a-review-of-research-on-the-influence-1wt0xfs3gm.pdf

Implementation Matters: A Review of Research on the Influence of Implementation on Program Outcomes and the Factors Affecting Implementation

Shaw and McKay's influential theory of community social disorganization has never been directly tested. To address this, a community-level theory that builds on Shaw and McKay's original model is formulated and tested. The general hypothesis is that low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption lead to community social disorganization, which, in turn, increases crime and delinquency rates. A community's level of social organization is measured in terms of local friendship networks, control of street-corner teenage peer groups, and prevalence of organizational participation. The model is first tested by analyzing data for 238 localities in Great Britain constructed from a 1982 national survey of 10,905 residents. The model is then replicated on an independent national sample of 11,030 residents of 300 British localities in 1984. Results from both surveys support the theory and show that between-community variations in social disorganization transmit much of the effect of community structural characteristics on rates of both criminal victimization and criminal offending.

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226955/Sampson_CommunityStructureCrime.pdf?sequence=2

Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory

An Integrated Theoretical Perspective on Delinquency and Drug Use The Integration of Strain and Control Theories The Integration of Strain, Control, and Learning Theories The Fully Integrated Model Description of the Study An Initial Multivariate Test of

Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use

1 Introduction.- 2 The Demographic Distribution of Delinquency and ADM Problems.- 3 Prevalence and General Offending/Use Patterns: The Joint Occurrence of Delinquent Behavior and ADM Problems.- 4 Age, Period, and Cohort Effects.- 5 Developmental Patterns.- 6 The Etiology of Delinquency and ADM Problems.- 7 Prediction of Delinquent and ADM Behavior from Other Delinquent and ADM Behavior.- 8 Summary and Implications.- References.- Appendix A Frequency of Alcohol Use.- Appendix B Mental Health Measures.- Appendix C Prevalence and Offending/Use Rates for Multiple Problem Types.- Appendix D Annual Transition Matrices for Problem Behavior Types.- Author Index.

Multiple Problem Youth: Delinquency, Substance Use, and Mental Health Problems

Multiple Problem Youth: Delinquency, Substance Use, and Mental Health Problems.

This paper addresses the general question of whether or not the satisfactory resolution of the methodological criticisms of self-report research will result in greater consistency between self-reported and official data with respect to the race and class distributions of delinquent behavior. We review the specific methodological criticisms of self-report delinquency (SRD) research; discuss the use of a new SRD measure in a national youth study; compare the race/class findings of this study with previous SRD research and with official arrest data; and examine the epidemiological and theoretical implications of these findings. Both class and race differentials are found in this study. It appears likely that the differences between these findings and those in earlier SRD studies are a result of differences in the specific SRD measures used. Additionally, these findings suggest a logical connection between SRD and official measures, and they provide some insight into the mechanism whereby official data produce more extreme race and class (as well as age and sex) differences than do self-report measures. The results of this study also have implications for previous tests of theoretical propositions which used self-report delinquency data. In short, prior self-report measures may not have been sensitive enough to capture the theoretically important differences in delinquency involvement.

Reconciling race and class differences in self-reported and official estimates of delinquency.

A conceptual framework for studying emerging neighborhood effects on individual development is presented, identifying specific mechanisms and processes by which neighborhood disadvantage influences adolescent developmental outcomes. Using path analyses, the authors test the hypothesis that these organizational and cultural features of neighborhoods mediate the effects of ecological disadvantage on adolescent development and behavior; they then estimate the unique contribution of neighborhood effects on development using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The study involves samples of neighborhoods from two sites, Chicago and Denver. The analyses support the hypothesis that the effects of ecological disadvantage are mediated by specific organizational and cultural features of the neighborhood. The unique influence of neighborhood effects is relatively small, but in most cases these effects account for a substantial part of the variance explained by the HLM model.

Delbert S. Elliott

Papers

Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use

Multiple Problem Youth: Delinquency, Substance Use, and Mental Health Problems

Multiple Problem Youth: Delinquency, Substance Use, and Mental Health Problems.

Reconciling race and class differences in self-reported and official estimates of delinquency.

The Effects of Neighborhood Disadvantage on Adolescent Development