Analysis suggests that the broader population of institutionalized youth likely to be missing from community-sample surveys presents a very varied range of problem combinations, with criminal involvements constituting an important and perhaps decisive element in the profile for some institutionalized youth. What appears clear from the findings is that the field of criminological study may have much to gain in studying the population of institutionalized youth across the full range of levels of involvement in crime, as a complement to the use of community-based samples. The study begins by comparing levels of social disadvantage and then moves on to illustrate the range of behavioral and psychosocial problems presented by an institutionalized sample. The institutionalized population examined was comprised of males admitted to residential care facilities administered by the National Board of Institutional Care (SiS) in Sweden between 1997 and 2001. References