Understanding aggression with adolescent girls: implications for policy and practice.

Seventy at-risk adolescent girls in 7 residential facilities were interviewed over a 12-month period. The girls were asked questions regarding experiences, thoughts, and feelings about physical and verbal fights with friends and parents. Results showed that many of these girls reported different reasons for starting and escalating verbal and physical fights, they had more negative feelings for verbal fights than for physical fights, and had similar thought processes during both kinds of fights. More girls acknowledged responsibility for starting fights with parents than they did with peers. Implications of the results for treatment of female young offenders and the development of public policy are discussed.

Tests of three hypotheses regarding the predictors of delinquency.

Three hypotheses regarding the predictors of criminal activity in children and adolescents were assessed. These dealt with family, peer, and attitudinal variables, and they were explored in relation to indices based on seriousness of criminal activity and reoffending. The data were based on a sample of 338 youths who had been convicted of crimes and received probation or custody dispositions. The results provided general support for a model implicating family, peer, and attitudinal variables in youthful criminal activity. They did not, however, provide support for hypothesized interactions between family relationship and family structuring dimensions or between family relationship and peer association variables. The results did support an hypothesis regarding the independent contribution of an antisocial attitudes variable to the prediction of criminal activity.

Examining the needs of youth in secure custody: why we need to "recreate the wheel" in Canadian juvenile justice.

The current study reviews the personal characteristics of 32 consecutive admissions to a secure custody centre in one southwest Ontario jurisdiction under the Young Offenders Act. Results indicated that there was considerable variability amongst the group regarding court history and the seriousness of the charge on which committal was made. Background history data suggested that the problems of youths committed to secure custody reflect considerable difficulties within families and school. The discussion questions whether the youths in this group are better served through the dispositions emphasizing custody-deterrence or rehabilitation-treatment. Implications for young offender policy are also presented.