Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Macrostructural Trends and the Reshaping of Adolescence
- 2 Youth in Aging Societies
- 3 The Transition from School to Work
- 4 Criminal Justice in the Lives of American Adolescents: Choosing the Future
- 5 Adolescent Health Care in the United States: Implications and Projections for the New Millennium
- 6 Youth and Information Technology
- 7 Social Space, the Final Frontier: Adolescents on the Internet
- 8 Approaching Policy for Adolescent Development in the 21st Century
- Index
- References
4 - Criminal Justice in the Lives of American Adolescents: Choosing the Future
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Macrostructural Trends and the Reshaping of Adolescence
- 2 Youth in Aging Societies
- 3 The Transition from School to Work
- 4 Criminal Justice in the Lives of American Adolescents: Choosing the Future
- 5 Adolescent Health Care in the United States: Implications and Projections for the New Millennium
- 6 Youth and Information Technology
- 7 Social Space, the Final Frontier: Adolescents on the Internet
- 8 Approaching Policy for Adolescent Development in the 21st Century
- Index
- References
Summary
Although most adolescents break the law – indeed, abstaining from involvement in at least petty delinquencies might be considered “deviant” – only a relatively small percentage of the youth population is brought into the criminal justice system in any given year. In the United States, for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1999) compiles annual data on arrests for “Crime Index” offenses – an index composed of eight offenses that is meant to assess serious violent and property crime. A little over 4 percent of youths nationally are arrested for any Crime Index offense over the course of a year (Cook and Laub 1998). Perhaps more revealing, only a tiny percentage of juveniles in the United States – less than one-half of 1 percent of youths ages 10 to 17 – are arrested for violent offenses on the Crime Index (Snyder, Sickmund, and Poe-Yamagata 1996). Further, even among adolescents who are arrested, 44 percent are diverted from formal processing by the criminal justice system, with their cases handled informally (Stahl 1999).
Growing up in the United States, then, most youngsters do not have their lives decidedly circumscribed by the criminal justice system. They may experiment with illegal activities, but their criminality is not serious enough and persistent enough to draw sustained attention from enforcement officials or to prompt their incarceration. This observation is not advanced here as a prelude to our arguing that criminal justice interventions are of little consequence – as we will see shortly.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Changing Adolescent ExperienceSocietal Trends and the Transition to Adulthood, pp. 88 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
References
- 10
- Cited by