Researchers continue to examine the macrolevel trends of gun crime but little consensus exists regarding the microlevel determinants of gun behaviors. Moreover, little is known if patterns of gun behavior vary between adults and juveniles. This research examines patterns of gun possession, carrying, and use across adult and juvenile arrestees. This research moves beyond descriptive studies of aggregate gun patterns and explores the demographic and perceptual correlates that may inhibit or facilitate gun behaviors. Current results illustrate the prevalence of gun-involved behaviors among adults and juveniles, though juveniles were more likely to carry and fire a gun. Results also suggest that gun behaviors among juveniles are largely driven by gang membership, while ready access to guns, fear of the street, and the risks of arrest influence adult behaviors. Present findings have implications for gun policy, particularly as it relates the role of deterrence-based programming and demand-side initiatives.

Extant research has theorized that community conditions affect the level of student violence in and around schools, yet few studies have tested this proposition directly. This research does so by assessing whether social conditions in a school's attendance area affect the likelihood of students bringing weapons to school. Current results indicate that the level of economic disadvantage, residential mobility, and violent crime in a school's attendance area are unrelated to student-level weapon carrying. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Extant research has found that crimes against juveniles are substantially less likely than crimes against adults to come to the attention of the police. Few studies, however, have attempted to systematically examine variation in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims. With assault and robbery data from the 1994-2001 National Crime Victimization Survey, this research explores this issue by addressing whether victim, offender, and situational characteristics of crime are effective in mediating the disparity in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims. Current findings indicate that the relationship between juvenile victims and police reporting was only attenuated, in part, after controlling for school victimizations and crimes perpetrated by juvenile offenders. Current findings also reveal that distinguishing crimes reported to nonpolice officials had no effect, attenuating variation in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims.

Research on the risk factors associated with gang joining suggests that the best predictor of gang membership is the accumulation of risk factors across a number of domains. These same risk factors are also associated with poor mental health and suicide, suggesting that gang members may be at risk for these outcomes. The current study utilized a nationally representative sample to examine two related issues. First, do youth who later become gang involved report levels of self-esteem, depression, suicidal thoughts, and attempted suicide that are substantively different than the general population? Second, how does gang membership affect these indicators of mental health? Results suggest that youth who become gang involved have significantly higher levels of depression and report a substantively higher rate of suicidal thoughts and behaviors than comparison youth. Furthermore, membership in gangs exacerbates these underlying problems, creating higher levels of depression and a higher prevalence of suicidal thoughts and actions.

In A General Theory of Crime, Gottfredson and Hirschi dispute whether valid self-report data can be collected among respondents lacking self-control. This research tests this argument by examining two processes that undermine the validity of self-report data: unit and item nonresponse. Specifically, this research addresses two questions: Within a longitudinal self-report study, are respondents with lower self-control less likely to be retained in annual follow ups? And are respondents with lower self-control less likely to complete a self-report survey in its entirety? These questions are examined with an adolescent sample from the National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance and Education Training Program. Current findings reveal that, after adjusting for the influence of student sociodemographic characteristics, self-control is unrelated to sample retention during four annual waves of data, but current findings do reveal that lower-self-control adolescents are more likely to leave survey items unanswered. Implications for the testing of self-control theory are explored.