America's safest city : delinquency and modernity in suburbia /

Using a wealth of ethnographic research and detailed data, noted juvenile justice scholar Singer (criminology and criminal justice, Northeastern Univ.) details how the occurrence of delinquency is effected and affected by where people live. He cautions that bad parenting or bad neighborhoods cannot solely explain delinquency. Criminal justice scholars must also take into account how parents parent, how schools teach, the availability of recreational programs, and how juvenile justice institutions provide preventive rehabilitative programs (alternative programs for offending youths). Singer also reveals that in maximum-security prisons for juveniles, many juvenile inmates come from poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and much fewer come from middle-class families. The social class difference is because "... impoverished youth lack opportunities for prevention, treatment, or diversion ..." immediately after committing their first serious offenses. Equally important is that impoverished youths have experienced harsh lives coupled with more arrests without the second and third chances available to middle-class youthful offenders. The effects of relational modernity (chapter 3) also discuss how parents of youths who commit fewer offenses are quick to prevent adolescent problematic behaviors and effectively eliminate future criminalistic transgressions with counseling and by diverting their teenagers into rehabilitative programs. This volume is packed with solid, illuminating findings. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Peter J. Venturelli, Valparaiso University