U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Community (From Handbook of Youth and Justice, P 265-275, 2001, Susan O. White, ed. -- See NCJ-187115)

NCJ Number
187128
Author(s)
Robert J. Bursik Jr.
Date Published
2001
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Research is examined that deals with the role of neighborhood dynamics in the assimilation of young people into social, economic, and political institutions at the local level.
Abstract
The first section of the paper presents an overview of the social disorganization model developed by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay in an attempt to account for neighborhood variations in juvenile delinquency rates. Although this model was first proposed 70 years ago, it provides the intellectual context that is essential to appreciate more contemporary work in this area. The second section of the paper discusses extensions and revisions of the model that have led to the recent revitalization of modern local community approaches to juveniles and juvenile delinquency. The final section of the paper focuses on the relationship between the level of a community's economic deprivation and its juvenile delinquency rates. The author concludes that current understanding of community-delinquency relationships is rudimentary and that theories of delinquency should take these relationships into account. 51 references and 4 endnotes