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Crime and Juvenile Delinquency

Nancy A. Matthews*
Northeastern Illinois University

Updated 2008 by Jeffrey Ulmer
Pennsylvania State University


The Crime and Juvenile Delinquency Division is concerned with the relations between society and the criminal and juvenile justice systems, the institutions that regulate and address crime. Our division’s vision of a just world starts with the notion that this system should be fair and just. People should not be targeted for excessive social control by agents of the Crime and Justice System (CJS) based on their membership in a group that is constructed as dangerous or especially criminal. In other words we envision a CJS that would promote justice and avoid classism, racism, and sexism, rather than being a significant site for producing these unequal social relations.

Second, harms by the powerful against the less powerful in society should be recognized as crimes and acted on by the CJS; e.g. violence against women, hate crimes, corporate crime that harms consumers, employees, and citizens.

Third, we advocate our juvenile justice systems returning to a rehabilitative rather than punitive project, supported by broader social policies that give young people access to the social resources and experiences that enable them to become full participants in a just society. In particular, we advocate that juvenile justice systems turn away from policies that transfer juveniles to adult courts, where they are typically punished more harshly and their rehabilitative needs generally are not pursued.

Fourth, we recognize that crime and delinquency are harmful to communities and individuals. However, crime control through punitive criminal justice has had questionable results at best. Instead, we urge the expenditure of social resources should be focused on creating the conditions that are known to lessen crime: adequate employment, quality educational opportunities, strong local communities, and support for families and parenting--rather than enlarging the prison-industrial complex.

Demonstration Projects:

In general, projects that involve close local community involvement in addressing crime problems and alternatives to the current criminal and civil legal systems offer the most promise as demonstration projects. The use of dispute mediation services for problem-solving is one such model that is increasingly used in many communities. One example of this is the FamilyConference Model created in New Zealand as a means to solve problems of child abuse and neglect. Rather than a punitive system, this model brings a broadly defined kinship network into play and facilitates their planning and implementing a care plan for children who have been or are now at risk of being abused or neglected. Variations on this model have been implemented in Illinois. Another model exemplifies cooperation between social change activists and the criminal justice system. In the Minnesota Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), begun in Duluth and replicated in more than 20 other communities, the battered women’s movement and police and courts cooperate to provide advocacy to victims from their first contact with the police. Some of the innovations include: Advocates at the battered women’s shelter have access to police records of domestic violence and contact victims to offer advocacy; arrested batterers are often ordered to participate in DAIP counseling and education programs; and courts accept input from DAIP advocates about the safety needs of victims. This program has increased the number of prosecutions for domestic violence and reduced the incidence of repeat violence by batterers in the program.

Corrections is an important area to look for promising models of just systems. Despite the massive resources poured into corrections in the U.S., few scholars would hold our system up as a model. Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden and Norway, offer models of relatively humane systems. In addition to decriminalizing and depenalizing certain offenses, Sweden, for example, limits the use of imprisonment to only the most serious crimes. Sentences are considerably shorter than is typical in the U.S. and institutions are small--the largest houses about 200 inmates. The purpose of incarceration is “to promote the adjustment of the inmate in society and to counteract the detrimental effects of deprivation of liberty” (Act on Correctional Treatment in Institutions 1974 quoted in Terrill 1990). Keeping inmates close to family, housing in clean individual cells, offering educational and work-release opportunities and remuneration for such activities are some of the hallmarks of this system.

Key Difficulties:

One of the key difficulties we have faced in working toward our mission has been the political climate of the last three decades. Sociologists see the criminal justice system and the crime problem as embedded in larger social structures and relations. However, many in the political arena have not shared this view. Solutions require broader changes, including more democratic and community involvement, but this conflicts with the trend toward corporatization and privatization of all areas of social life. Social investment in communities, education, health care, and adequate employment opportunities is not politically popular. Accompanying this resistance to measures that are more likely to prevent crime are popular attitudes shaped by political leaders and the media that are extremely punitive, promoting the dehumanization of those labeled criminals. In addition, the popularity of bio-social explanations of behavior render rehabilitative programs unpopular. There is reason for hope, however. Frances Cullen’s 2005 presidential address to the American Society of Criminology noted that rehabilitation has enjoyed a resurgence, due in large part to the efforts of concerned social scientists. Furthermore, as corrections expenditures increasingly strain state budgets, many state governments have demonstrated an increased willingness to listen to alternatives to the overreliance on incarceration.

Key Books:

Miller, JoAnn and Dean Knudsen. 2007. Family Abuse and Violence: A Social Problems Perspective. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

William Chambliss and Marjorie Zatz (eds.). 1993. Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Meda Chesney-Lind and R. G. Shelden. 1992. Girls, Delinquency, and the Juvenile Justice System, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Kupchik, Aaron. 2006. Judging Juveniles: Prosecuting Adolescents in Adult and Juvenile Courts. New York: NYU Press.

Michel Foucault. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage.

Coramae Richey Mann. 1988. Unequal Justice: A Question of Color, Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press.

Susan E. Martin and Nancy C. Jurik. 1996. Doing Justice, Doing Gender, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mari Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. 1993. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

James Messerschmidt. 1997. Crime as Structured Action: Gender, Race, Class, and Crime in the Making,Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Stephen Pfohl. 1994. Images of Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological History, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Richard Quinney. 1975. Criminology: Analysis and Critique of Crime in America, Little, Brown: Boston.

Jeffrey Reiman. 1995. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 4th ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Diana Scully. 1994. Understanding Sexual Assault. New York: Routledge.

Michael Tonry. 1995. Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Garland, David. 2001. Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Beckett, Katherine and Theodore Sasson. 2000. The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Ahmed, Eliza, Nathan Harris, John Braithwaite, and Valerie Braithwaite. 2001. Shame Management through Reintegration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press;

Best, Joel. 2004. Deviance: Career of a Concept. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.


*Chair of Nominating Committee, Crime and Juvenile Delinquency Division, 1996-97.