The problems of shoplifting are increasing in importance and complexity. In the United States, the majority of those apprehended for department-store shoplifting were youths. This paper considers shoplifting in department stores, in supermarkets, on college campuses, etc., in the United States and other countries. The focus is on the psychology of…

Author explores some of the issues raised by the National Association of Youth Clubs project "Youth and Race in the Inner City". (Editor/RK)

Describes fathers whose children were born to teenage mothers in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1983. These fathers were at a serious educational and financial disadvantage when compared to fathers whose partners were aged 20 or above. White teenage fathers had lower educational attainment than Black; many more Black teenage fathers were unmarried than…

The 14 articles in this theme issue are divided into five categories: Youth and Literature--Issues and Opportunities; Portrayals of Children and Youth in Literature; Youth and Their Parents in Literature; Death and Bereavement in Young People's Literature; and Epilogue. The final section focuses on Literature and Youth Development--Implications…

Youth today remains marginal to the primary institutions of American life. They no longer have opportunities within the family to develop skills, exercise responsibilities, or learn adult roles. Youths spend long periods of the day segregated in schools; longer periods in passive entertainment. Alienation results in political apathy, mental…

From among factors theoretically considered relevant to preventing school dropouts, empirical procedures identified five variables that predicted most of the variance among marginal youth: (1) extent of misbehavior in school; (2) belief in school's relevance to employment; (3) feelings of success in school; (4) parental monitoring of behavior; (5)…

Describes a 30-233 "Youth Awareness Program" in Washington, DC, to help students recognize the responsibilities of citizenship. Police collaborate with schools in providing classroom visits, field trips, and instructional materials aimed at specific areas of concern for adolescents, such as alcohol, drugs, smoking, sexuality, juvenile…

Assessed the effectiveness of structured group counseling and explicit bibliotherapy compared to individual counseling/wait list for junior high school students (N=48) from changing families. Students in the prevention groups rated the help they received more positively than students counselled individually. (JAC)

Demonstrates the role of a school counselor in establishing a substance abuse prevention effort and describes specific steps taken in a rural community to deal with adolescent drug problems. School and local mental health counselors were crucial to development of the program. (JAC)

Over the past ten years, probation departments across the state of California have seen a number of important changes in the way they do business. Beginning with Title IV-A-EA in 1993, departments began a system-wide "sea change," from a focus on suppression, enforcement, and monitoring of youthful offenders to a focus on families and on…

This document summarizes research on the utility of family strength constructs to predict adolescent behavior problems. Three national survey and interview databases were analyzed for this study, the National Longitudinal Study of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS), the National Survey of Children (NSC), and the National Survey of Families and…

Violence among youth has reached epidemic proportions. Every five minutes a child is arrested for a violent crime. To understand this trend, this paper examines characteristics of adolescent males who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. The study focuses on drug and alcohol involvement, the relevance of education, sexual practices,…

For many decades communities have been troubled by the criminal activities of youth gangs. This report looks at almost 30 years of information collected on gang problems in nearly 4,000 communities. The number of localities reporting gang problems increased between the 1970s and the 1990s, representing a tenfold increase in the number of cities…

This fact sheet presents several data tables related to teen pregnancy, birth rates, abortion, contraceptive use, and sexually transmitted diseases. The data reveal that during the 1990s, rates of teen childbearing have declined, returning to the levels reached in the mid-1980s. Declines come from a lower proportion of teens having sex and a…

Growing evidence indicates that teen courts give a community's children and adults a practical response to the problems associated with delinquency, traffic safety, and substance abuse. Developing and implementing teen courts requires a collaborative effort and juvenile justice agencies need baseline information that will aid them in creating teen…