This chapter suggests that delinquency conceals two distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of one sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating m a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive. There are marked individual differences in the stability of antisocial behavior. The chapter reviews the mysterious relationship between age and antisocial behavior. Some youths who refrain from antisocial behavior may, for some reason, not sense the maturity gap and therefore lack the hypothesized motivation for experimenting with crime.

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Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.

The authors suggest that the most promising route to effective strategies for the prevention of adolescent alcohol and other drug problems is through a risk-focused approach. This approach requires the identification of risk factors for drug abuse, identification of methods by which risk factors have been effectively addressed, and application of these methods to appropriate high-risk and general population samples in controlled studies. The authors review risk and protective factors for drug abuse, assess a number of approaches for drug abuse prevention potential with high-risk groups, and make recommendations for research and practice.

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Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention.

This paper presents a general strain theory of crime and delinquency that is capable of overcoming the criticisms of previous strain theories. In the first section, strain theory is distinguished from social control and differential association/social learning theory. In the second section, the three major types of strain are described: (1) strain as the actual or anticipated failure to achieve positively valued goals, (2) strain as the actual or anticipated removal of positively valued stimuli, and (3) strain as the actual or anticipated presentation of negatively valued stimuli. In the third section, guidelines for the measurement of strain are presented. And in the fourth section, the major adaptations to strain are described, and thcwe factors influencing the choice of delinquent versus nondelinquent adaptations are discussed. After dominating deviance research in the 196Os, strain theory came under heavy attack in the 1970s (Bernard, 1984; Cole, 1975), with several prominent researchers suggesting that the theory be abandoned (Hirschi, 1969; Kornhauser, 1978). Strain theory has survived those attacks, but its influence is much diminished (see Agnew, 1985a; Bernard, 1984; Farnworth and Leiber, 1989). In particular, variables derived from strain theory now play a very limited role in explanations of crime/delinquency. Several recent causal models of delinquency, in fact, either entirely exchde strain variables or assign them a small role (e.g., Elliott et al., 1985; Johnson, 1979; Massey and Krohn, 1986; Thornberry, 1987; Tonry et al., 1991). Causal models of crime/delinquency are dominated, instead, by variables derived from differential association/social learning theory and social control theory. This paper argues that strain theory has a central role to play in explanations of crime/delinquency, but that the theory has to be substantially revised to play this role. Most empirical studies of strain theory continue to rely on the strain models developed by Merton (1938), A. Cohen (1955), and Cloward and Ohlin (1960). In recent years, however, a wealth of research in several fields has questioned certain of the assumptions underlying those theories and pointed to new directions for the development of strain theory. Most notable in this area is the research on stress in medical sociology and psychology, on equity/justice in social psychology, and on aggression in psychology-particularly recent versions of frustration-aggression and social

Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and Delinquency

In this article we introduce the concept of workplace incivility and explain how incivility can potentially spiral into increasingly intense aggressive behaviors. To gain an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie an “incivility spiral,” we examine what happens at key points: the starting and tipping points. Furthermore, we describe several factors that can facilitate the occurrence and escalation of an incivility spiral and the secondary spirals that can result. We offer research propositions and discuss implications of workplace incivility for researchers and practitioners.

Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace

reoffending than those who completed treatment. The predictors of nonsexual violent recidivism and general (any) recidivism were similar to those predictors found among nonsexual criminals (e.g., prior violent offenses, age, juvenile deliquency). Our results suggest that applied risk assessments of sexual offenders should consider separately the offender's risk for sexual and nonsexual recidivism. Assessing chronicity is crucial for clients whose sexual behaviors have brought them into conflict with the law. Many exceptional criminal justice policies, such as postsentence detention (e.g., Anderson & Masters, 1992), lifetime community supervision, and community notification, target those sexual offenders likely to reoffend. Clinicians need to judge whether the client's behaviors are truly atypical of the individual (as the client would like us to believe) or whether the client merits a virtually permanent label as a sexual offender.

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Predicting relapse: a meta-analysis of sexual offender recidivism studies.

"It is difficult to identify any collection of essays in the social sciences which has achieved so high and consistent a standard of scholarship and presentation. Every school of criminology and criminal justice will need to subscribe to the series, if it maintains its present standard (and the status of its co-editors and its editorial board is a strong guarantee that it will)"-Gordon Trasler, British Journal of Criminology (July 1984). Volume 7 is essential reading for scholars and researchers who need a general source of knowledge about crime, its causes, and its cures. Readers will find a variety of topics in this volume, including drug law enforcement, age and crime, criminal careers, the relations between family variables and juvenile conduct problems and delinquency, and national crime surveys. The first six volumes, also available, join together with Volume 7 to create a comprehensive collection on criminology.

Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research

Despite the perennial claims of politicians that our courts are coddling hardened criminals, the fact is that America already sends a higher proportion of its citizens to prison-and for longer terms-than any other western nation. To quote the Canadian House of Commons's Committee on Justice, "If locking up those who violate the law contributed to safer societies, then the United States should be the safest country in the world." Yet despite well-documented and mounting evidence that increased penalties alone cannot reduce crime, the Reagan and Bush administrations repeatedly lobbied for tougher mandatory sentences and more prisons. Although black crime rates have been stable for twenty years, the number and percentages of blacks in jail and prison have skyrocketed since Ronald Reagan took office. The trend continues with President Clinton, who recently called for "three strikes you're out" legislation dictating mandatory life sentences for third felony convictions. In Malign Neglect, Michael Tonry addresses these paradoxes with passion and lucidity. Drawing on a vast compendium of the latest statistical, legal and social science research, he takes on the explosive issues of race, crime and punishment. As unconventional as he is committed, Tonry confronts uncomfortable truths head-on. On the one hand, he is outraged by politicians' talk of Willy Horton and Welfare Queens. The texts may be crime and welfare, Tonry writes, but the subtext is race. While he recognizes that the disadvantaged have no license to attack, rape or steal, and that the absolution of disadvantaged offenders would require a cynical acceptance of the suffering of victims, he argues powerfully that crime control policies can be recast so that, without diminishing public safety, they do less harm to disadvantaged black Americans. Tonry presents devastating evidence that our current policies are decimating black communities, and impeding the movement of disadvantaged black Americans into the social and economic mainstream of modern America. A blistering attack on worn-out misconceptions about race, poverty, crime and punishment and a fearless prescription for change, Malign Neglect is an indispensable briefing paper on a topic which goes to the heart and soul of the nation.

Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America

Examining the research and experience concerning crime prevention, this book offers a new conceptualization of the subject incorporating developmental, community, situational and law enforcement approaches. This collection of 11 essays also examines substance abuse, interpersonal violence, burglary prevention, retail sector crimes and city-centre street crimes.

Building a safer society : strategic approaches to crime prevention

Although criminal justice systems vary greatly around the world, one theme has emerged in all western jurisdictions in recent years: a rise in both the rhetoric and practice of severe punishment at a time when public opinion has played a pivotal role in sentencing policy and reforms. Despite the differences among jurisdictions, startling commonalities exist among the five countries-the U.K., USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand-surveyed here. Drawing on the results of representative opinion surveys and other research tools the authors map public attitudes towards crime and punishment across countries and explore the congruence between public views and actual policies. Co-authored by four distinguished sentencing policy experts, Penal Populism and Public Opinion is a clarion call for limiting the influence of penal populism and instituting more informed, research-based sentencing policies across the western world.

Penal Populism and Public Opinion: Lessons from Five Countries

Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity, and in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system. In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarised choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant." Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of interdediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.

Michael Tonry

Papers

Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research

Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America

Building a safer society : strategic approaches to crime prevention

Penal Populism and Public Opinion: Lessons from Five Countries

Between Prison and Probation: Intermediate Punishments in a Rational Sentencing System